Rohit Nair’s Blog

Yup, the dream is over. Real Madrid have been dumped out of the Champions league and have failed to reach the quarter final stage for the fourth season running. Am I sad? Most definitely, but am I surprised? No. Schuster is coaching a team in the champions league for the first time and quite clearly,he isn’t ready for this big a club. And with the squad we had, winning the cup would be nothing short of a miracle.

Thanks to the reputation the club’s board has, Schuster has his work cut out. Win silverware and please the crowd, else start looking for another club.  Its quite evident in his tactics that he’s insecure and his main objective is to just last the season. Playing the likes of Ruud, Raul, Ramos, Casillas week in week out, not giving enough chances to the youngsters even against lesser opposition, totally ignoring the Castilla players, rushing players back from injury into the starting XI all just reinforce the fact that he was afraid to lose, afraid to take risks of any kind. And when some of our key players got injured or were unavailable, it just exposed our inexperienced bench. Soldado clearly cannot be expected to perform miracles in the last 5 minutes of a champions league match, not because he isn’t good enough but because he simply hasn’t played enough minutes this season.