Ronaldo missed Sunday’s 2-0 win at Espanyol after being absent from Friday’s training leading up to the match. Madrid maintained a three-point lead over Barcelona with their fourth straight league victory this season.
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“I am happy not just with the goals of James and Karim, but with their performance in general”, Real Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane said.
Sporting had no answer to Atletico, who were 3-0 ahead as Griezmann scored his second on the half hour, while Fernando Torres rounded off the scoring in the second half.
“It’s going to be a long season and there will be hard moments”.
With everyone fit, the team’s strongest eleven now has no place for either Isco or James Rodriguez ― two gifted players who are (largely) popular with the fans and the media, and who know they would be guaranteed to play at practically any other club.
In what was nearly a complete re-enactment of Manchester United’s win over Portuguese side Sporting Lisbon back in 2007, Cristiano Ronaldo scored a late free-kick to salvage the game for Real Madrid against his boyhood club. However, the new campaign hasn’t started well.
Villarreal is fifth in the league with 8 points having won 2 games and drawn 2.
There has been much upheaval behind the scenes as well.
Fran Escriba took over and has guided Villarreal to two draws and two wins so far this season. We know they are a good team. They will look to strike on the counter after surrendering possession to Los Blancos.
Now appointed the manager of the biggest club in Europe: Zidane have managed to set a new record in the Spanish Primeria Division as the only coach in Real Madrid’s history to have 16 consecutive matches, thereby breaking Pep Guardiola 2011 record of winning 16 matches in a row.
On that basis Casemiro is nearly certainly ruled out from the game this Wednesday against Villarreal in the Bernabéu.
The Yellow Submarine have won just two of their last six away games. “He played really well on Sunday”.
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“Griezmann has been playing really well for a while now, and deserves to be among the first names”, he said. In just the third of those games, for example, they played atrociously against Las Palmas and appeared to be heading for a 1-1 draw ― which would have in itself been barely deserved ― before Casemiro popped up with an 89th minute victor.
