Real Madrid's Lack of Balance Will Always Hurt Them Against the Best

In the end, it was comfortable enough for Real Madrid on Tuesday. The first goal didn’t arrive until the 64th minute but, once it had, all pressure was off, and second followed four minutes later.

Madrid beat AS Roma 2-0 on the night, 4-0 on aggregate, and they were through to the quarter-finals of the Champions League having had a remarkable 37 shots (per WhoScored.com): a comprehensive victory.

Yet while it’s true that there wasn’t a spell when it didn’t feel as though Madrid were on top, there were some distinctly uneasy moments.

Edin Dzeko missed a glorious chance with the score at 0-0. Mohamed Salah wasted two, arguably three, golden opportunities to put Roma ahead on the night. The Italian team had 12 shots. At 2-0 down from the first leg, they shouldn’t have had a sniff.

As it was, they should have made life extremely difficult for Madrid. And that’s the problem with Zinedine Zidane’s side: however good they are going forward—and at their best they are very good indeed—they are defensively extremely suspect.

Manuel Queimadelos Alonso/Getty Images

That’s not to say Real Madrid didn’t deserve to win. They were the better side in both legs. But it is to say that there was something bewildering about Roma’s inability to score.

Better strikers than Dzeko—even the Dzeko of three years ago—would have buried his chance. More natural finishers than Salah would have scored at least one of his. Better sides than Roma will not yield up as many chances and will be more clinical in front of goal.

Perhaps Madrid will win the Champions League. That’s the nature of the competition; there is a random aspect to the final stages that means it’s not inconceivable that any of the quarter-finalists could win it.

Defend diligently, ride your luck, take your chances and, as Chelsea demonstrated in 2012, you don’t have to be anything like the best side in Europe to win the competition. (In the 2014 final, Madrid beat an Atletico Madrid team that had finished three points ahead of them in La Liga).

But there’s also a reason Madrid lie 12 points behind Barcelona in La Liga and it’s not just Rafa Benitez. Or even Barca’s forward line of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez.

This remains, as it so often has done under the presidency of Florentino Perez, a highly imbalanced squad. It is a paradox, one that lies at the heart of modern football—by agglomerating large numbers of the most glamorous attacking talents in Europe, it can present itself as a romantic ideal, and yet it is overlaid by the most pragmatic commercialism imaginable, which in turn makes it inefficient from a football point of view.

And while it would be profoundly misleading to portray Barcelona as some kind of paradigm of righteousness, they have at least put football at the heart of what they do: They have a coherent approach that means their big signings are better targeted and that, just about, overrides the ego of any one player.

In a footballing environment that seems to be becoming increasingly concerned with the individual, Barca remain a team.

Which brings us, inevitably, to Cristiano Ronaldo in whose being is encapsulated the whole problem of Madrid. His 353 goals in 336 appearances for the club is an astonishing record. His feats of goalscoring may never be surpassed. He has won games all but single-handed. He is a player capable of moments of brilliance that take the breath away. He is one of the greatest of all time.

But undercutting all that is the fact that in six seasons at Real Madrid—the richest club in the world—he has won one league title and one Champions League. He will not add a Liga title this season.

"

Cristiano Ronaldo = GOALS

2010/11—53
2011/12—60
2012/13—55
2013/14—51
2014/15—61
2015/16—40 #RMCF [h/t @Squawka] pic.twitter.com/rBWrV4aD1y

— Bleacher Report UK (@br_uk) March 9, 2016"

That’s not to say Ronaldo is the reason for the underachievement. The booing of him by Madrid fans on Tuesday was startling, if not entirely unexpected given his public criticism of some of his team-mates. But it’s hard to avoid the feeling that the Portugal international has become symptomatic of the problems and that his presence is an obstacle to change.

Even if he did subsequently offer a semi-retraction, those comments about Lucas Vazquez, Jese and Mateo Kovacic did breach a cardinal rule. It’s incumbent upon the most senior and best players in a club to try to encourage the less experienced members of the squad. That’s how the team as a whole benefits.

It’s hard not to interpret Ronaldo’s comments as the opposite of that: demanding his team do more for him. Somehow he has become bigger than the richest team in the world.

Perhaps Ronaldo is not quite the player he was. He’s 31 now and the really explosive turn of pace has gone. But he’s still clearly one of the best in the world.

It’s not his slightly diminished abilities that are undermining Madrid. He remains perhaps too critical to how they play, a not uncommon problem with great goalscorers. Los Blancos' default way of playing is to get the ball to him. He had 14 shots on Tuesday. Shut down those avenues—easier said than done, admittedly—and Madrid are significantly hampered.

But the real problem is the balance, and that’s what creates the defensive uncertainties. James Rodriguez is a very fine player, but he is not a right winger. He constantly cut infield as did Gareth Bale from the left, linking with Ronaldo, who started from a nominal centre-forward position in the absence of Karim Benzema.

Paul White/Associated Press

From a creative point of view it worked, but it did mean that when Roma broke there was always space on the flanks as the two full-backs pushed up to offer width. Marcelo in particular was caught out again and again with balls played behind him for the pace of Salah to exploit, but it was only partly his fault; in part it was the structure.

The introduction of Casemiro in front of the back four released Toni Kroos and Luka Modric from some of their defensive responsibilities and the Croatian had an excellent game, but there were still moments when Pepe and Sergio Ramos, who kept getting caught in possession, were exposed.

Madrid won, and won comfortably. Their array of great attacking players means they could win any game because a moment of genius is never far away. But the general lack of coherence means that among Europe’s elite, they are uniquely vulnerable.