Jekyll-and-Hyde Real Madrid Showcase All-Too-Familiar Fragilities Against Roma

Zinedine Zidane would later praise them, but Luciano Spalletti wasn't having any of it.

"I could congratulate my players on their performance, but that would be living a fairy tale and not facing up to reality," the Roma boss told reporters late on Tuesday night after his side's 2-0 defeat to Real Madrid.

This was a frustrated Spalletti. A tired, strung out and exasperated one. He refused to accept the honourable-loss notion, rallied against the David-and-Goliath idea and obliterated any suggestion that his team deserved some backslapping.

He continued:

"

We're Roma but we have to play like Roma. We should come to these grounds to show people who we are. ...

When I go into the dressing room after a 2-0 defeat and see the players feeling satisfied because they're going to be congratulated on their performance, that doesn't sit right with me. We should be angry.

"

He was right: They should be angry. This was a glorious opportunity blown.

In the buildup to Tuesday's UEFA Champions League encounter at the Bernabeu, Zidane had been at pains to dismiss talk of this tie being a foregone conclusion. Despite facing a 2-0 deficit, Roma were arriving with seven straight league wins to their name. Confidence was high. Spalletti's transformation was taking shape.

"A lot of people think it will be easy, it will be difficult," said Zidane on Monday. "They're a great team and their attackers are very good."

Little more than 24 hours later, though, Zidane must have felt like he'd been talking to himself and himself only. If he was acutely aware of Roma's threat, his players either didn't believe it or hadn't listened. They were sloppy. Casual. Inattentive. All over the place.

The Jekyll-and-Hyde existence stills grips them.

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With Madrid's sparkling second-half showing against Celta Vigo from only three days earlier still strong in the memory, the Bernabeu had hoped it would get that Madrid again. The relentless one. The swarming one. The one that had pressed, tackled, won possession high up and suffocated their opponents before blowing them away.

Instead, it got the opposite.

For the opening 60 minutes on Tuesday, Zidane's men showed the sort of intensity and application you expect from a hungover teenager working the Sunday morning shift at a local supermarket for minimum wage.

Time after time, Roma sliced through them with moves of staggering simplicity, Spalletti's side finding success with basic passes and straight-line dribbling, the ease of it all almost unnerving the visitors.

In the fifth minute, Alessandro Florenzi's cross went within inches of finding the head of Edin Dzeko in the six-yard box after a careless giveaway from Pepe and some strange wandering from Marcelo. It was an early warning, but no one in white, it seemed, was paying any attention.

Madrid meandered along in some sort of second-gear haze, fortunate that Roma then embarked on an exercise of self-sabotage.

Soon after the early warning, Mohamed Salah stormed down an empty right flank—a running theme throughout the night—before setting up Dzeko for the most glorious of chances. He missed. Before the half was out, Salah had taken his turn to do the same on two more occasions and would do so again just after halftime. 

That pair also missed the chance to play in a wide-open Diego Perotti on the break, while Florenzi and Kostas Manolas drew fine saves from Keylor Navas.

For Roma, both the number and nature of their chances were remarkable. For Madrid, though, this was Schalke all over again, but with one key difference: Roma were their own worst enemies as well.

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"Whenever a team creates chances against you, you have to be angry, it's normal," said Zidane, whose side was fortunate that second-half strikes from Cristiano Ronaldo and James Rodriguez were enough on an emblematic night. "We want to play and take risks, and sometimes these things can happen. When you leave spaces, that creates risks."

This wasn't just about spaces being left, though, even if Marcelo had seemed intent on completely vacating his left-post post. Instead, this was about a striking lack of aggression, discipline. Collective will.

Midway through the first half, there was a brief passage of play that was symbolic of both the night and Madrid's current existence.

On the left wing, Perotti and Lucas Digne shared possession well inside Madrid's half, Seydou Keita and Miralem Pjanic then joining them. As the ball moved between them and the quartet looked for options ahead, every single player in white was either motionless or walking.

Eventually, after what almost felt like a pause in play, Toni Kroos pushed out to apply pressure, but no one joined him. The move only broke down when Stephan El Shaarawy made a poor touch.

It's this that's at the core of Madrid's on-field issues: Too often they allow teams to play, to settle and to grow comfortable. Intensity is sporadic. Little is done truly as a unit. The reliance on moments of brilliance is immense.

In one night against Roma, Madrid showcased it all in a way that's become all too familiar.