We all knew that with the departures of Zinedine Zidane, Cristiano Ronaldo and the subsequent arrival of Julen Lopetegui to the bench would mean a big change in the white team. And this has been demonstrated by the prominence of new figures in Madrid such as Bale, Asensio or Sergio Ramos; In addition, the Merengue team now shows an image that is more focused on the collective than on individualities.
What we did not expect is that the Spanish coach would propose a total revolution in the style of play of Real Madrid. From the arrival of José Mourinho to the merengue bench until the Zidane era, Real Madrid practiced easily recognizable football. They knew perfectly well what they were playing: trying to maintain a solid defense and launching the attack with deadly counterattacks at full speed with a Cristiano Ronaldo in * killer * mode that did not fail one.
However, Julen Lopetegui has another way of understanding football, as he showed in Porto and the Spanish National Team. The Spanish coach is from the school of Pep Guardiola, so he is a faithful defender of the "tiki-taka" style of play that prioritizes the touch and possession of the ball above anything else.
And both in the preseason and in the first League matches that is what we have seen, a Real Madrid playing "tiki-taka". Believe me that for me, a Real Madrid player of more than 10 years, to see my team playing like that is a completely strange and unrecognizable image for me. I'm not saying it's bad; just that it's weird, different.
The feeling of Real Madrid in these first changes is doubt, beating weak rivals but letting points escape to a rival mid-level as Athletic Club last weekend. On Wednesday will be the debut in Champions vs Roma at the Bernabéu, which will serve as a thermometer to see what this Real Madrid can aspire at least in this first half of the season.
If you analyze Real Madrid, you have players like to play tiki-taka. Having Kroos, Modric, Benzema, Asensio, Marcelo or Isco, all players with a touch of exalted ball is something that not all teams can afford. But the problem is that Madrid is not used to playing in this way, nor his audience to see him play like that. And this has been noticed especially with the obsession of playing out from the bottom with controlled ball, which has cost the defense merengue and has caused many times they are in extreme situations, about to lose the ball to few meters of the goal.
From my point of view the "tiki-taka" is an obsolete style of play, which has no place in modern football. It had its beginning and its end in the same country that was its driving force: Spain. Luis Aragones promulgated this style of touch with his Spanish national team of EURO 2008 and Pep Guardiola copied this philosophy and added no lesser details (such as the best player in history) to give form to the best club in history. The reality is that despite the fact that the vast majority of the clubs in the world tried to copy this style, only two teams managed to carry it out successfully: the Spain of 2008-2012 and the Barcelona of Pep Guardiola. The "tiki-taka" had a beginning, a resounding success and boom and a clear ending in 2012. As I said before, this style of play despite the fact that it gave rise to the two best teams in history, is incompatible with modern football . See if this sport is not changing, we are talking about something that happened just 6 years ago as if it were an old story.
So far Lopetegui is married to this touch football. And it is noticeable because this Real Madrid does not look anything like its predecessors. So marked has been the change of style that has even managed to overcome Barcelona as the team with the highest percentage of possession of the ball in La Liga. Let's suppose that Lopetegui manages to get the team to play as he wants, but the operation will not be immediate, it will take time for the "tiki-taka" to be imbued with Real Madrid's DNA. And I do not know if time is precisely a resource that Julen Lopetegui has in abundance. The reality is that as soon as the results do not start to arrive, the stands will let you know, especially when having to endure a boring style of play every 15 days in the Bernabéu combined with unpopular decisions as the little role of Modric, Casemiro or Isco.
Lopetegui still has many things to solve and many aspects to work on, such as the decrease in shots on goal, something reflected in the lack of goal by the merengue team. The games will continue running and we will see if Julen Lopetegui is able to rediscover the "tiki-taka" or sign a gray step by Real Madrid being fired mid-season.
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