Real Madrid difficult to keep up with...

My last blog update was about the last game before the winter break when Real Madrid beat Barcelona in the first fixture of the El Classico. Real went in to the winter break as Champions with a 7 point lead over second placed Barca. Their first match back from the break was at home against Real Zaragoza. Speaking of starting the New Year with a bang, i fell sick on 31st and the partying dint help a bit. The two weeks that followed i watched all the games, much more than usual across different leagues in Europe as i was at home recovering. But i was in no mood to write about them. Now i am in a difficult situation here and that is to write about games that are not fresh in my memory. Hence i am only writing a brief on what has happened.

Real Madrid V Real Zaragoza:

The winter break was over and Schuster gave a well deserved break to Pepe after his herculean effort against Barcelona. He had Heinze back healthy and fit and partnered him in defense with Cannavaro. Unfortunately Heinze's return was to last only 16 minutes as the player fell injured and had to be replaced with Torres. Fortunately Schuster has someone like Ramos in the team who can easily play both as a CB and as a RB. Baptista still continued getting the nod ahead of Guti. The Champions definitely looked out of sorts and slow off the block and it was Zaragoza who were looking dangerous. The first real chance was flagged offside against Ricardo Oliviera after latching on to a rebound from a Diego Milito shot. The star of the show was Casillas, the keeper coming up with save after save and the Zaragoza player started thinking if they will ever get through him.

After a dull first half of lacklustre football, Schuster replaced Sneijder by Guti, which immediately had an effect. He started threading in his trade mark through balls. Robinho who made a brilliant run along the right floated in a cross for Van Nistelrooy to make an easy header. It was 1-0 Real Madrid. Zaragoza still was not prepared to give up yet, the strikes at the Madrid goal continued and it always ended up hitting Casillas in goal. Zaragoza made the mistake of pushing too many men forward as a corner in the Madrid half that was cleared saw Robinho collect the ball in midfield make a brilliant run at the Zaragoza goal and pulled the trigger at the right time to score to the right bottom corner. 2-0 Real Madrid.

It still required Casillas to make more extra ordinary saves to maintain a clean sheet. In total he made 9 saves, including some spectacular diving saves and some point blank saves. Real Madrid took all 3 points though the football was lacklustre. But it is no cheap feat that they have been unbeaten in 20 games in their home ground including all competitions. They have played 9 home games in the season and have claimed all possible 27 points. Real lead the pack by 7 points.

Levante V Real Madrid:

Levante are a team in trouble. From the looks of it everybody wants out of there. 3 players left in the January transfer window. The players on the roster have not been paid in months. Easy match for the visiting Champions right? Well wrong guess, Levante took the pitch as a team who has nothing to lose and went straight at Real Madrid. With Diarra out playing for Mali in the African cup, Gago had a lot to prove and contribute for the team in that holding midfield role. While Gago is not exactly very strong in his tackles and not great in winning defensive headers, but compared to Diarra, Gago is a superb link player and passes the ball well.

Riga was looking really threatening and he was creating the maximum trouble not enough to trouble the defense of Real with Pepe and Cannavaro. Baptista has a chance at goal which fell to Raul and that was also cleared by the Levante defense. This was not the only time Baptista would get agonizingly close to scoring, he recieves a cross fro Gago in the second half of the match and with goal at his mercy hits Tomassi in the back. He gets a second bite at the apple, which is again blocked.

Schuster knew it was time to make changes, he brought Guti in fro Baptista. Neither team were able to break the deadlock. Higuain came in to the match on 71' for Sneijder and his first touch was an attempted cross when he was inside the penalty box, and it hit the hand of a Levante defender. The penalty was awarded by the referree and Van Nistelrooy scored from the spot.

0-1 Real Madrid.

Van Nistelrooy had more ideas to celebrate his contract extension and he received the ball deep in the right side of Levante box, Higuain made a dummy run and the Dutchman instead of making the evident pass, with no Levante defenders closing down on him took the shot across and completed his brace. 0-2 Real Madrid.

Real Madrid finished playing half the league (19 Games) and had scored 41 goals the highest across major leagues in Europe. Real Lead the Spanish La Liga with 47 points from 19 games.