So sánh kroos và modric wb

These observations — where I look at Real Madrid’s history, its players on loan, Castilla, tactical tidbits, and other relevant thoughts -- are now a regular weekly thing. All previous editions can be found here.

Let’s get right into it.

The Incredible Mateo Kovacic Experience

It is staggering that Real Madrid have, arguably, the two best central midfielders on the planet, and yet, when either of them sit, we don’t expect a drop-off. That’s because the dwindle in this instance is going from Luka Modric or Toni Kroos to Mateo Kovacic — in other words from Everest to K2, a mere 230 meter drop (or relatively non-noticeable).

Now imagine having neither Modric or Kroos, away in Paris in the second leg of a smoke-filled, potentially season-breaking clash, and still being fully in control. We saw it, we lived through it. A decade from now you should be talking about this game. Remember when Kovacic just took over in Paris? I was lucky to be around for that one. All his traits that have made him stand out as a prospect — positioning, insane ball-carrying, crucial interventions — peaked that night. And it’s not that we’ve seen peak-Kovacic yet (somehow, there’s another gear in there once he becomes the full-time cog), but we often talk about him as the heir to Modric — as if it’s sometime in the future — when he’s ready now, and he’s been ready for a couple seasons. Elite performances against Atletico Madrid and Barcelona (both away from home, and both without players like Kroos, Modric, or Casemiro alongside him) last season have proven that. Against PSG, he politely reminded us who he was, when some felt uneasy about his early-season performances. Casemiro, Kovacic’s central midfield partner that night, also did the Croatian justice by putting in a superb two-way shift. Both were excellent amid all of Real Madrid’s absentees.

Some of Kovacic’s work was clear. A lot of it was subtle:

Some of my favourite individual sequences are ones (like the above) where players are calculating more things than one simultaneously. The play starts with Kovacic marking Veratti while Rabiot cuts inside to find an outlet. Vertically, his lane to Veratti is cut off by Kovacic, and once Casemiro takes over and marks Veratti, Kovacic is able to hedge off and put pressure on the ball-carrier. When the ball goes out-wide to Alves, Kovacic has to drop again to ensure the passing-lane to Veratti doesn’t exist. While he snuffs it, he pressures Rabiot. That’s not easy to deal with as an opposing player. When your outlets are eliminated, you have to think quick. Kovacic unnerves Rabiot by taking away his space after taking away his pass. When Asensio comes over to help, Rabiot is completely out of options.

Other instances, where he looks caught — and in the below cases, just when Veratti, Alves, or Di Maria think they’re about to do some damage in the final third -- Kovacic recovers to make a ridiculous intervention:

That’s just some of his beautiful defensive work. The less subtle, more obvious, line-breaking version of Kovacic needs no introduction. Ball-carrying is not about dribbling full-throttle with the ball at your feet in open water — it’s about finding space when there is none, and creating a counter-attack when you’re not really in a counter-attacking position. Against PSG or otherwise, we’re almost desensitized to how Kova pulls off stunts like this and creates a chance out of a closed space deep in his own half:

Imagine having Toni Kroos, Luka Modric, and Mateo Kovacic in one team. Just imagine.

Small game Ramos vs big game Ramos

Worrying about Sergio Ramos’s form would be a thing a few years ago. Now we just kind of brush it off as an annoying inconsistency issue. In big games, all the kinks — bathroom breaks, clumsy tackles, and bad passing — just kind of fade. Against PSG, no one should’ve been surprised he stepped up. This is a thing. Like the rest of the team, his ball size is directly correlated with the volume of the Champions League anthem.

But Ramos might be a special case. His level of play between what qualifies as a big game, and one that doesn’t, is dramatic.

Real Madrid will need a healthy (and suspension-free) Ramos during this home stretch as we head into spring. Say what you want about Nacho’s greatness (a reliable servant who we all love), but he has his aerial issues, and hasn’t been too hot in the past month or two. Jesus Vallejo is a write-off this season for health reasons. You count him as a bonus. Varane will need help from players like Ramos, Casemiro, Ronaldo, and Bale defending set-pieces.

Ramos is key helping Marcelo — a player who continues to take defensive gambles despite being one of the greatest offensive full-backs in history. At Parc des Princes, Real Madrid dodged bullets from Marcelo’s defending more than once before the Brazilian went into full samba-mode towards the end of the game and ripped PSG (at the end of both legs). Ramos helped in doubling-up on Mbappe:

When the midfield was bypassed on a counter, Ramos was there to mop up danger:

Ramos’s crutch this season remains his passing. He will still sling north of 90% of his passes successfully, but it’s the ones that don’t connect, when he’s not pressed into coughing up possession, that hurt the build-up. This is not a new thing:

Luka Modric and Toni Kroos conducting the spring orchestra

Uh-oh, it’s spring — the season where flowers bloom, the sun gives us more heat, days are longer, and Real Madrid’s midfield goes through it’s annual metamorphosis. Luka Modric and Toni Kroos peaking, umm, helps with that process.

Modric made the cut in both mine and Om’s Real Madrid all-time XI. Toni Kroos also made my all-time 23-man squad. Having both in one team is ridiculous. They will be missed dearly five-to-ten years from now. Seeing them peak this time of season is delicious — even if they (and the team collectively) dug themselves an irreversible hole in La Liga.

Kroos remains one of the best passers in football. He slings 2.3 key passes per game in La Liga — only Messi and Jonathan Viera conjure more. (I’ve said it before, we need to get Viera into a better La Liga team to see his true potential.) Only one player in the entire country has better passing accuracy than Kroos and that is, surprise, Mateo Kovacic. After a few shaky performances earlier this season, Modric and Kroos have incrementally kicked into gear. They both bring so much to the table that tends to go unnoticed.

Something that we’ve begged for on the Managing Madrid Podcast — a double-pivot with Modric and Kroos surrounded by a two-way supporting cast — finally came into fruition against Real Sociedad where Real Madrid blitzed the Basques into oblivion. In one 35-second sequence against Eusebio’s men, we saw a glimpse of what they bring to the table collectively. Kroos recognizes Marcelo is caught, and rushes in-behind him to hound Xabi Prieto all the way to the corner flag to retain possession in the form of a throw-in. The ball comes into play and there is a hand-ball. Sociedad assumes there’s an opportunity to relax for a second to reset the defense. Nope. Modric takes a quick vertical free-kick and takes out four Sociedad players in the process:

They are individually great. Collectively, they turn into a Pacific Rim Jaeger that can unglue teams vertically with their quick and incisive passing:

To be sure, the entire team looked mentally hungover in Ipurua, and both Modric and Kroos started the match half asleep, misplacing some easy passes. But as they woke up in a real grind-out victory, they were both instrumental in creating space. Kroos always looks forward to pick-out out a defense-splitting pass. Bale makes a great off-ball run here that Kroos will always have the awareness and precision to pick out:

It goes without saying, the most famous play of that victory, ignited by Modric, is absurd.

Just think about the details of that play. In a nutshell: Modric intercepts the pass before providing an assist. In reality, that’s not a play many players can think of executing. There’s more genius behind it. Luka coaxes the ball-carrier into thinking he’s cutting off the wide pass, but he’s in a position to cut off both the pass out-wide, and also the vertical pass. He follows the interception with an outside-of-the-boot assist from deep. So good.

Modric is special. I once wrote a column about how he played as a right winger better than most traditional right wingers can. Left-winger-Modric might be just as fun, even if it’s as rare a sight as a Barcelona Champions League trophy:

Luka has always been a ‘I’ll do whatever I need to mop up the mess and ensure we don’t lose’ type player. Defensive coverage, joining the attack on either flank, reading passing lanes — he’s there. Look at him sprint back full-throttle against Levante from a corner kick:

The way Modric reads passing lanes, as was the case for his assist against Eibar, is the equivalent of always having your hands up on defense in basketball. No opposing player can relax with their passes without feeling threatened of a Modric interception:

One of his traits that will always go under-the-radar because he has so many good attributes, is his ability to very subtly start a dangerous attack with one touch, or one pass:

The entire build-up to the third goal against Girona was actually incredible

Did we ever really talk about it?

Pre-requisite to winning the Champions League: Zipping up vertical channels

I’m often labelled as too optimistic. This column could strengthen that narrative. Here’s something: it’s actually been a really poor season, generally. Recency bias might make us delirious. It might be a good idea to remind ourselves that Real Madrid of 2017/2018 have been a defensive mess — they’ve been horrible in defensive transition and haven’t provided proper coverage for the full-backs. If Zidane is to salvage the season by winning the European title, those things need to continually improve. Against PSG, Real Madrid dodged some bullets thanks to lack of efficiency from Emery’s men. Marcelo had a few gambles go unpunished. Generally, vertical compactness has been an issue. Some of these lapses have been gutted in Europe, but all it takes is one moment of carelessness to enable teams like Juventus, Bayern, City, Barca, or Liverpool to feast.

These moments, where passing lanes are neglected, and opposing players sneak into the half-space undetected, need to be shed from the system:

Both of those sequences are tough to watch. It’s too easy for Eibar and Betis respectively. You can see Boudebhouz freely show himself as an outlet in the second instance, and Sergio Ramos is visibly frustrated with Marco Asensio, who lets him sneak into that space. Meanwhile; in the first sequence, both Kroos and Isco combine for a disjointed press which leaves Casemiro by himself facing three open players.

The below defensive sequence which leads to a goal conceded at Benito Villamarin is wild. No one is closing the lane to Joaquin, and no one is in a position to snuff the ball away from him despite the heavy touch he takes. Somehow Joaquin recovers from a poor touch unpunished while Carvajal is back-peddling in-between two worlds:

It will be interesting to see what Zidane rolls with, schematically, when everyone is healthy during the final stretch of do-or-die matches. He tends to surprise, as he did against Barcelona earlier this season. When he fielded four central midfielders together in el Clasico (Casemiro, Kroos, Modric, and Kovacic), the team showed good signs in the first half. That presence in midfield, though struggling to connect the dots up front, was able to mask bad defending. In moments where Real Madrid switched off vertically without the ball, they could recover because they had a packed midfield with players in position for a rescue mission (this is all of course, before the ship sank in the second half):

Kroos, Modric, and Bale are all players with high defensive IQ. We’d be lying if they haven’t had poor moments without the ball throughout the season. All three of them, great as they are, can’t afford to have lapses for the remainder of this European title run. Modric has to switch on here, in a sequence where the team looks fragile behind the ball: