AUGUST 16 — Hot on the heels of their Champions League triumph in May, Real Madrid have continued to make headlines during the summer by further bolstering their already outstanding squad with the capture of three of the best players in the summer’s World Cup.
One of those, Costa Rica goalkeeper Keylor Navas, is not guaranteed a starting place as manager Carlo Ancelotti faces the task of deciding between the new arrival or veteran club captain and fan favourite Iker Casillas.
The other two summer signings, however, will come straight into their new team’s first choice line-up: Germany midfielder Toni Kroos and Colombia’s hero James Rodriguez.
Those two players were accordingly given their Real debuts in Tuesday’s UEFA Super Cup meeting with Europa League winners Sevilla, with Ancelotti finding space to cram Kroos and Rodriguez into an already superstar-packed team also containing the rich talents of Luka Modric, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema.
One man, though, used Tuesday’s Super Cup tie as an opportunity to remind us that he continues to stand head and shoulders above everybody else: Cristiano Ronaldo is still the main man at Real Madrid.
The Portuguese star has endured a difficult few months, with a lingering knee injury restricting his appearances towards the end of last season and a frustratingly poor standard of international teammates preventing him from making a bigger impact at the World Cup.
Indeed, over the last few weeks it has even been suggested that the signing of Rodriguez shows that Real, perhaps concerned by the physical problems he has been encountering, are starting to prepare for life after Ronaldo, lining up the Colombian to be the long-term replacement as the team’s main on-pitch driving force and off-pitch glamour boy.
But Ronaldo wasted no time in scotching those suggestions on Tuesday, masterminding Real’s comfortable 2-0 victory with both goals — one in each half — and a typically effervescent overall display, giving Sevilla little opportunity to stem his relentless flow of powerful attacking play.
In addition to his insatiable goal-scoring prowess, Ronaldo’s importance to Real on a tactical level was also highly evident on Tuesday night.
The arrival of Rodriguez has given Ancelotti the luxury of three attacking midfielders who are all capable of playing on either wing or through the middle.
Although the team will nominally line up with Bale on the right wing, Ronaldo on the left and Rodriguez operating through the middle, versatility and flexibility will be integral elements of Real’s approach this season, with the three superstars regularly interchanging positions in a fluid formation.
The question of how they will move around — who goes where and when — is one of the biggest challenges faced by Ancelotti.
To retain the overall balance and structure of the team, it has to be a seamless process, but the fast-moving nature of the game — especially the high-octane way Real play it — means the strategy can only be pre-planned by Ancelotti on the training ground to a certain extent, with the team shape largely decided ‘on the run’ by the players themselves during the course of each game.
From the evidence of Tuesday’s game, responsibility for those decisions will largely fall to Ronaldo himself. Essentially, he goes where he wants, with Bale and Rodriguez expected to fit in around him: if Ronaldo wants to wander towards the centre of the pitch, one of the others will move to the left to accommodate him; if he feels like switching over to the right flank, that instantly becomes his territory and his teammates play a supportive role.
That description is a simplification, of course – at times, even Ronaldo will have to create space for his teammates by making movement away from the ball. But on the whole, Ronaldo remains the chief, the man around whom everything and everyone else revolves…the brightest star in Madrid’s shining galaxy. And his two goals on Tuesday showed that he still deserves to claim that lofty status.
Since his World Cup heroics for Colombia, Rodriguez has been dubbed “King James” by sections of the media, appropriating the nickname previously reserved for American basketball star LeBron James.
His time may eventually come, but for now Cristiano Ronaldo has started the new season by sending out a powerful message: at the Bernabeu, the throne is already occupied.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
