A new era for Ronaldo?

In his latest column, Guillem Balague discusses a new era for Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Enrique’s mistakes in Barcelona’s shock defeat by Deportivo Alaves, and Atletico Madrid’s struggles to perform for a full 90 minutes.

Atletico and Real Madrid recorded comfortable wins over Celta Vigo and Osasuna respectively, while Barcelona lost 2-1 at home to Deportivo Alaves.

But what did we learn from the latest round of fixtures? Sky Sports’ Spanish football expert Balague dissects the performances of last season’s top three before answering YOUR questions…

Real Madrid

Real Madrid didn’t play well, but they don’t need to play well to actually win games. They have so much power up front… Cristiano Ronaldo scored on his return, and he played 65 minutes. This is something new that we’re going to see more often this season, where he will be rested or won’t be allowed to play the full 90 minutes. 

The reason being, of course, is that in the last three years he’s finished the season really badly. Last season was the most successful of his career, and it will probably take him to the Ballon d’Or, but he was physically not at his best and [Zinedine] Zidane wants to avoid that again.

In my eyes, it’s two superheroes talking to each other, and only superheroes have got the same language and understand each other. I don’t think anybody else would have been able to tell him what to do. 

We’re seeing a new era in the Cristiano Ronaldo story, one where he listen to the coaches and realises the limits imposed by his body. As usual, he will come stronger from it, I am sure. 

Barcelona

There were many reasons for Barcelona’s defeat. One is that, unlike Real Madrid, the rotation was excessive. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course, but there were seven changes from their previous La Liga game, and two of the players who remained, Arda Turan and Javier Mascherano, were moved into different positions. Arda from the left of the attack to the right, and Mascherano from the left to the right of the centre-back pairing.

What was missing was a reference point, better use of space and better positioning, but what I’ve always feared of Luis Enrique is that he’s not bothered too much about putting work towards making the team compact, about creating new ways of attacking, about focusing on controlling games, about positioning.

He prefers football that is more direct, which means Barcelona have less control and perhaps even less solutions when they are tactically surprised.  

Sometimes, when you have so much power up front, some coaches think there is no point in working hard at other things, but when that power up front isn’t working, it becomes more difficult.

Luis Suarez, Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi were on the bench, and Neymar thought he had to sort everything out instead of staying wide. That was not corrected, the team did not offer many other solutions and for an hour Barcelona looked plain.

There was some self-criticism from Luis Enrique in the press …

continue reading in source www.skysports.com