Is Zinedine Zidane at risk of ruining his Real Madrid legacy? After being ‘steamrolled’ by PSG the goodwill is starting to run out
“Made of glass” is how Marca described Real Madrid’s humiliating 3-0 defeat in Paris on Wednesday night.
AS bemoaned a team “without soul”. El Pais concluded that PSG had simply “steamrolled” the European giants. It was hard to disagree.
For the first time in over a decade, in 578 games, Real Madrid failed to register a single shot on target.
“They were better than us in every aspect,” Zinedine Zidane admitted post match, but the question that Madrid will reasonably be asking now is why? As is so often the case when they falter under his tutelage, their coach blamed a “lack of intensity”. That feels like far too easy and ambiguous an excuse.
An excuse that doesn’t explain the lesson in tactics that Thomas Tuchel gave the Frenchman. From kick-off the home team were in a different gear to their opponents, winning the ball high up the pitch and clearly instructed to move it around at a pace that would expose the sluggish, disjointed visitors.
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Without entering into the debate over whether Thibaut Courtois should have done better at his near post for Ángel Di María’s opener, that Mauro Icardi eliminated Raphaël Varane from the equation so simply, and Juan Bernat was able to ghost behind Dani Carvajal with relative ease to provide the assist said far more about the level of analysis that the two respective coaching teams had put in.
“Icardi writing the textbook on how to pull a defensive system apart with your back to goal in 45 minutes. He’s taking advantage of the distance Madrid leave between the lines, getting tight to Varane and Éder Militão as a reference, then releasing PSG’s second line,” Alberto Edjogo-Owono, a former striker with over a decade of experience playing in Spain, explained.
That space between the lines Madrid left was striking to see at this level. With less than half an hour on the clock Karim Benzema screamed at his counterparts, furious at his lone attempt to press, but they likely wouldn’t have heard anyway.
Madrid were divided in two, their defence so deep that the midfielders were on the edge of the box and in no way positioned to help the forward line push up. That in turn only worsened their floundering attempts to play out of PSG’s pressure.
At one stage Casemiro had no other option than to try a risky dribble past two opponents because there was no passing option available to escape his own third.
The mistakes, glaring as they were, could perhaps have been forgiven had the Spanish giants made any significant improvement in the second half once Zidane had time with his players to make adjustments, but instead it was more of the same.
The Parisians continued to play one-twos at will, and it is no exaggeration to say they could have been five up by the time Thomas Meunier scored the third and final goal in added time. The nature of that goal summed up Madrid’s inadequacies: finished off by the right-back after he and PSG’s left-back eliminated both of Madrid’s centre-backs and their goalkeeper with a series of passing exchanges. Chaos exposed by precision.
Cut to Neymar and Kylian Mbappe laughing in the stands. They, like Edinson Cavani, didn’t even play. This was PSG’s second string pulling Madrid’s pants down.
Even the greatest team can have an off night, but neither the result nor the performance comes in isolation for Zidane.
Last weekend his team were a late Courtois wonder-save away from letting a three goal lead slip against Levante. They have already dropped points twice in four rounds of LaLiga, against Villarreal and Valladolid, who were in relegation battles last season.
Taking his record in the 16 matches since he returned to Madrid last spring as a whole, a pattern emerges. Valencia, Leganés, Getafe, Real Betis and now PSG are all examples of teams coached by someone with a clear philosophy, the opposite of Zidane’s man-manager style. All exposed Madrid and took something against them.
In football circles there have long been rumours of Zidane’s basic approach to preparation, coaching and training.
The suspicion that Cristiano Ronaldo was behind his success in knockout competitions is overly simplistic, but it is true that the way the Frenchman has comfortably been bettered in all but one of his league campaigns at Madrid cannot be ignored.
Nor the manner in which his team continue to flounder despite significant sway over signings being conceded to their manager this year, allowing him to bring in personal targets like Ferland Mendy and Eden Hazard, while feasible club options for midfield reinforcement like Cristian Eriksen and Donny van de Beek were nixed in favour of a fruitless pursuit of Paul Pogba.
Another midfielder Zidane didn’t fancy, Dani Ceballos, was sent out on loan, while two other players he unsuccessfully tried to move on – Gareth Bale and James Rodríguez – have been among Madrid’s better performers this season.
A three-time Champions League-winning coach has a lot of goodwill in the bank, but it is starting to run out.
Gradually, the dissenting voices are growing. “I don’t see Zidane as capable of finding a solution,” Madrid’s 1998 Champions League final hero Predrag Mijatović lamented on Wednesday.
Zidane needs to find a solution fast. On Sunday his team travel to the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán, a ground they often have trouble at.
Waiting are a Sevilla side currently top of the league and undefeated, coached by the last man to succeed Zidane at Madrid before his reign was ended after only 14 matches. Julen Lopetegui.