NOVEMBER 5 ― You might not know it from looking at La Liga’s standings, which show them respectively in first and second place, but these are dangerous days for Real Madrid and Barcelona.
The two Spanish giants have both made unconvincing starts to the new season, and midweek mishaps in the Champions League served to underline just how vulnerable they are.
Firstly, on Tuesday night, Barca were convincingly beaten 3-1 by former manager Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.
After taking a 1-0 lead through a brilliant counter-attacking goal from Lionel Messi and dominating the opening 40 minutes, they completely lost their way after an error from Sergi Roberto gifted possession to City and Ilkay Gundogan equalised.
In the second half, Barca were totally overrun and were eventually rather fortunate to only lose by two goals, with the defence looking vulnerable to every City attack while the usually deadly forward line of Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar offered practically nothing.
The following night, Real Madrid’s 3-3 draw at Legia Warsaw was even more shocking given the lowly level of opposition and the fact that they raced into an early two-goal lead through Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema.
Despite their opening burst, Real always looked defensively exposed and it was no great surprise when Legia first got themselves back into contention, then levelled, and then took the lead, forcing Real into desperate attacking to rescue a point through Mateo Kovacic’s late goal.
Although the problems currently being encountered by Barca and Real are different in detail, they both boil down to the same thing: the two teams are not functioning in midfield because they are not playing as coherent team units.
For Barcelona, it’s quite shocking to suggest such a thing considering the brilliance of their midfield play over the last few years, when Xavi masterfully ran the show with the able assistance of Sergio Busquets from behind and Messi and Andres Iniesta from ahead.
But since the arrival of manager Luis Enrique a couple of years ago, Barca have evolved into a different kind of team: Xavi is gone, Iniesta is currently injured, Messi has a new starting position on the right wing, and Busquets is often finding himself totally overloaded.
The emphasis now, rather than dominating the game through possession in midfield, is getting the ball as quickly as possible into wide attacking positions, where Messi and Neymar serve as the driving forces to supply and combine with Suarez in the middle.
When those three magnificent players click they are close to unstoppable, providing countless magical moments during their two years together and winning consecutive Spanish league and cup doubles as well as the 2015 Champions League final.
But the problem comes when opposition teams, as City did so well during the second half on Tuesday, snuff out the supply lines and prevent the “MSN” forward line from getting the ball in the first place.
Those supply lines are the full-backs, Roberto and Jordi Alba or Lucas Digne and, crucially, Busquets, who is increasingly being targeted by opposition coaches under the realisation that if they smother him, they can also smother Barca’s passing options from the back and the ball will never reach MSN.
It is a quandary for Enrique to resolve, and his counterpart at Real Madrid, Zinedine Zidane, faces a similar dilemma after playing a major role in his team’s poor showing in Warsaw with a reckless team selection.
Rather than going with his usual 4-3-3 formation, Zidane opted for an even more attacking 4-2-4 on Wednesday, shoe-horning Alvaro Morata into the attack alongside Benzema, Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Although it naturally made the team dangerous going forward, evidenced by their three goals and several other chances, it also left them extraordinarily unbalanced because none of those four forwards have much inclination to do any defending.
All three of Legia’s goals were constructed fairly simply, with the sheer lack of defensive numbers allowing the Polish team’s players to effectively choose a free route through midfield and towards goal.
It was nothing new because Real have been defensively poor for years, with their weaknesses most brutally displayed by a 4-0 thrashing at local rivals Atletico Madrid nearly two years ago. Since then, they have failed to improve defensively and have now gone 10 games without keeping a clean sheet.
Essentially, both Zidane and Enrique are taking a gamble, hoping that the positives of leaving their midfields so unprotected will outweigh the negatives.
And more often than not, that gamble pays off because Messi, Suarez and Neymar for Barca, and Bale, Benzema and Ronaldo for Real are all fabulous attackers who possess more than enough ability to beat most teams on their own.
Asking them to adopt more defensive positions, or replacing them with more defensive players, with the intention of strengthening the midfield, would naturally detract from the team’s attacking capabilities and that, for now, is something neither coach is prepared to do.
But sometimes, as happened this week in Manchester and Warsaw, those superstars are unable to become matchwinners and the overall weakness of the team structure is exposed.
If that “sometimes” starts to become “regularly”, as looks to be the case so far this season, these two giant clubs and their coaches will have more serious problems to contend with.
And as Barca’s next game, on Sunday night, is an away trip to very dangerous Sevilla, we might not have long to find out.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
