Real Madrid seek respite from La Liga woes on Wembley debut against Spurs

On the plane back from defeat in Girona on Sunday evening Zinedine Zidane went over the game again while in the rows behind him his players quietly watched films or TV series, keen to clear their minds of what had just happened. “It wasn’t a nice feeling,” Sergio Ramos admitted, and it didn’t make for good viewing either.

“I’m not worried,” the Real Madrid manager had said as he sat in front of the media after the match; now, as he sat in front of his captain flying west, and with no need to transmit a public message of tranquillity, he might have felt differently.

Madrid’s 2-1 defeat by Girona leaves them trailing La Liga’s leaders Barcelona by eight points as they head to Wembley to face Tottenham Hotspur in the Champions League. “The league’s long,” Zidane said and on Monday night Ramos insisted he had overcome eight points before. Actually, he hasn’t: Madrid have never won the title from so far behind and it was not just that they had been defeated; it was that, as the Girona coach, Pablo Machín, insisted, it had been “fully deserved”.


At half-time, Madrid led 1-0, but the home side had already hit the post twice and in the dressing room Machín told his players they could win; all they had to do was carry on. Girona scored twice in the second half and might have scored more; Madrid sought a way back into the game but never truly looked like finding it. At one point, the olés rang round as Girona kept the ball from their opponents, moving it from man to man as those in white shirts repeatedly arrived a little too late.

Before that cameras had caught Marcelo, who lost the ball 16 times during the game, responding to Luka Modric: “I made a mistake? What, and you don’t?” With the exception of Isco, seemingly on a one-man mission to get Madrid going, they all had. “We have to play better and work harder,” the midfielder Casemiro said at the end. Zidane disagreed. “We didn’t play badly,” he insisted. Yet nor had they, he admitted, played well.

Actually, badly was a pretty accurate description of a team lacking inspiration or intensity, suffering a striking disconnect between their players, disorganised and so overrun all across the pitch that Zidane ended up replicating Girona’s formation in an ultimately futile attempt to plug the leaks. In the press conference afterwards, the coach went in circles, not convincing in his analysis – which is unusual for him. “When we lose, it’s for a reason,” he eventually conceded. He denied that there had been a lack of work, intensity or attitude. There had certainly been a lack of football.

Read More: https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/nov/01/real-madrid-wembley-spurs-champions-league-tottenham-hotspur