liverpool will no doubt feat on (real madrid's) inability to play fluent football, using alonso and mascherano to dominate the midfield and thereby allowing gerrard and torres to attack a shaky defence. my guess is that liverpool win very convincingly
and whilst that obviously indicated confidence, i'm not sure i was quite expecting that. liverpool were absolutely fearsome last night, tearing into real madrid with a verve that is too often missing at anfield, but exhibiting the control and precision that constitute the usual benitez hallmarks. in short, this was terrific, potentially the best all around performance from liverpool under the spaniard. but real madrid were complicit in this shellacking; the self-proclaimed "greatest club in the world" were an absolute embarrassment.
and let us count the ways. raul is a walking testimonial to the decline of the club, the same mediocre player he has been for at least 5 years - for all the talk of a revival, he remains a husk of the player he was in his early 20s, boosting his goal tallies with tap ins and short range simplicity in a team that often overpowers inferior competition in la liga - and didn't mesh well with gonzalo higuain, who still flatters to deceive. however, even if the argentine doesn't totally convince, you can at least point to his attitude and the inescapable reality of having to partner raul as excuses.
at a more fundamental level, madrid are staffed with the lacklustre, the overhyped and the lazy. arjen robben looked like a man who would quite willingly concede the game if offered the chance, whilst wesley sneijder appeared to be suffering from a rather noxious combination of reading his own euro 2008 reviews a little too hard and positional discomfort. at the back, gabriel heinze is at best half the player he once was; fabio cannavaro is utterly cooked, existing on a shadowy collection of defensive tricks - if you could put his head on pepe's body you'd probably been able to create one good defender.
as such, its impossible to single out any one player as being particularly responsible for this colossal failure than another. but if there is one player in the madrid line-up that says everything you need to know about the state of the club at the moment, it is fernando gago. having watched quite a lot of real across the last two seasons, in both la liga and the champions league, it is truly difficult to discern what it is the argentine does; he isn't particularly good defensively, lacking the snarling magnificence of his compatriot javier mascherano or the calm sturdiness of someone like claude makelele, but isn't good offensively either, without the vision to penetrate good teams with his passing or the physical talent to overwhelm them. if madrid envision him as some sort of xabi alonso clone, dictating the pace of the game with his passing, they are sorely mistaken: gago has one setting, and that is slow.
given this, it is no surprise that one is left feeling rather sympathetic towards the magnificent iker casillas. the goalkeeper has probably spent more time than any other in his position screaming at his defenders since bursting into the first team as a teenager, first through the helter-skelter galactico era and then through the subsequent "rubbish but somehow maintaining domestic success" era that has followed. and again last night, casillas was tremendous - keeping out torres after about 5 minutes with his legs before turning away attempts by mascherano, skrtel & gerrard as liverpool ran riot.
beyond him, there were no bright sparks. across the two legs even sergio ramos has looked a shadow of himself, whilst lassana diarra flickered but failed to generate any momentum against the superior tandem of alonso and mascherano. this was the story all across the pitch, as every battle was lost by the team in white, liverpool's dominance sprawling ostentatiously across the arena.
finally, any appraisal of this contest would be incomplete without the proper glorification of those that manufactured such a victory. fernando torres seemed completly re-energised, the bile of all those madridistas and all of those madrid derbies thrown back at them with every surge and every touch, destroying the reputations of one ageing legend and one hitherto promising player as he went. steven gerrard excelled yet again, springing from midfield whenever he could, his increasingly deadly movement allowing him to attack weakspots in the madrid defence, whilst the triangle he formed with alonso and mascherano was so effective that carragher and skrtel were reduced to a perfunctory guard duty. mascherano was quiet in the first leg of this tie but phenomenal in this, his gritty dynamism proving an insurmountable barrier for the flawed attack of the men in white, grinding down their spirit with every tackle. meanwhile, arbeloa had a quite brilliant game at right back, shutting out arjen robben, and ryan babel had one of those games that remind you just how good he could be.
it was a fantastic spectacle, a crumbling edifice laid bare for the world to see. madrid need drastic action, and much depends on the forthcoming presidential elections - this isn't a team, or a situation, that will be remedied with one €40m signing; it is a squad that needs comprehensive redrawing. for liverpool, it was a tantalising evening, demonstrating the great potential of the side when it contains a fit and healthy fernando torres. benitez will still need a further 4 or 5 players in the summer to make them proper contenders for the premier league, but they are ever more daunting in knockout football. how the rest of the quarter finalists will dread a trip to anfield.
No comments:
Post a Comment