Burtaque, the home of Leganes is just one of those places Real Madrid go to for football and you end up wondering if they just ran a marathon race the whole 90 minutes. The pitch can be blamed for most part as it was apparently not suited for the players and they found themselves constantly misplacing passes and difficulty in retaining the ball.
On the ''retaining the ball part'', the lack of possession display is largely down to Solari's formation. A 4-3-3 formation that looks like a 3-5-2, same one he used against Real Betis three days ago. I mean, what else would you call a formation that has pure left-backs like Marcelo and Sergio Reguilon in the same starting line up? Alvaro Odriozola, Nacho Fernandez and Raphael Varane completed the defence. Casemiro, Valverde, Isco completed the midfield and Vazquez and Vinicius forwarded the attack.
As the match wore on, it was apparent Solari is trying one of those dirty tricks of his by using Marcelo as a winger. Every play of Real Madrid was easily nullified by the resillient Leganes defence and Real Madrid failed to carve out a real opening.
A dragged ball in the penalty are that involved the woodwork, great save from the keeper, ball watching by Vasquez, all happening at the same time saw Leganes saw a goal.
Real Madrid had their fair share of chances as well but fluffed them. During the closing stages, the Leganes team threw everything they had at Real Madrid hoping to cause an upset but the whites stood firm and thwarted all efforts.
Conclusion
I had a feeling Real Madrid would either lose or draw this match as a result of the current situation of things in the team. With injuries plaguing the team, Solari is trying to find a means to experiment on some formations and test players and which match would be more suitable than that of a copa del rey match with a 3-0 aggregate advantage.
It is true that Solari looked at the match for how easy it would be and set out with his weird plans that almost cost us that aggregate. A nice win for Real Madrid, Sevilla is next on the cards.
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