When you talk about congested schedules for football teams, you will feel nothing but pity for the Real Madrid team who have played four matches in the space of 10 days (excluding international duty matches). That's approximately a match every 4 days, with no time to recover properly.
However, you would argue that a team of Real Madrid's standard need not be complaining of congested fixtures and should have some machine of sort to get them back to great physical condition, which would be very silly of you realistically. These are humans and no matter how many buns you feed them or how much machine you put them through, it doesn't change the fact that there are issues in a human body a machine cannot handle.
In the match against Athletic Bilbao tonight, it was obvious the congested schedule is beginning to take a toll on the players. They ran their socks off but kept over hitting passes, misjudging tackles and mistiming plays in general. Towards the end of the encounter, they found it difficult to hold onto the ball and string about 5 passes together without giving the ball away to the opponent. As a matter of fact, Athletic Bilbao ran Real Madrid dry tonight and the whites are lucky to have ended with the 3 points as theirs. It shouldn't surprise you that Real Madrid's goal keeper Thubiat Courtois was declared man of the match.
However, credit should be given to whom it is due. The whites have not lost a match since October 3rd and have won all their fixtures since that loss, bar a draw with Osasuna on October 27th. They have proved to be title contenders and their win tonight have taken them 7 points above 2nd placed Atletico Madrid.
Another battle awaits Real Madrid three days from now, which is another title deciding encounter. The whites have very little time to go through normal recovery processes and will have to make do with what they have. A win on Saturday against 3rd placed Real Sociedad will further cement Real Madrid's goal of winning the La Liga.
Comments