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This article is part of Football FanCast’s Pundit View series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent quotes from journalists, pundits, players and managers…
Real Madrid enjoyed a successful weekend, as they beat Sevilla 1-0 away from home.
And after the clash, Zinedine Zidane perfectly summarised their weekend with a bang-on quote.
What did he say?
There were two main aspects that negatively affected Real Madrid’s ongoing 2019/20 campaign across all competitions: defensive fragility and inability to play well consistently throughout the 90 minutes of a game.
The former has been present all too regularly, and their win over Sevilla was actually their first clean sheet of the 2019/20 season.
Even before that, Los Blancos had a horrible pre-season, conceding 16 goals in a total of just five games.
The latter aspect, meanwhile, was most notably observed against Levante on matchday four.
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The Galacticos had a 3-0 lead at half-time at the Santiago Bernabeu, only to concede two goals in the latter stages of the game and almost throw the three points away.
Zidane rightfully identified both of those aspects in the post-match interview and it perfectly summarised their victory.
“We’re happy because we played the full 90 minutes at a high level at a difficult place. This is a group win and I’m happy for all the players. Sevilla have done well since the beginning of the season and we have to congratulate the players.
“We defended well and read the game well tactically. That is crucial when you take on such a big team. We knew we could score and thanks to Karim, we did so.”
A step forward
The Sevilla clash was definitely a step forward in every sense of the word for Real Madrid.
Sure, the match was far from perfect and Los Blancos only managed to record a narrow 1-0 victory over their hosts. But just by winning in Andalusia, something they hadn’t done in four years, is an achievement in itself.
And winning with a clean sheet and a persistent and consistent performance, as Zidane pointed out, makes this triumph that much bigger than it already appeared to be.
Of course, this doesn’t mean all of their problems are magically fixed after a single game but it does mean the team is working on it one step at a time.
If they can continue improving and addressing their issues like this in the future fixtures, maybe they can find something at the end of the rainbow after all.
