La Liga 2011/12 without Messi and Ronaldo

[untxi]

Comments

[yeats]

meh. drummed up rivalries are drummed up.

i mean, this article could have just as easily been written as, "which team's offense is less reliant on a single player," but that doesn't fit into the narrative....remember, when ronaldo scores the most goals, it's "ronaldo is selfish, his team is unbalanced." but when messi does, it's "ronaldo is coming up short, less important to his team's success."

[untxi]

Although it was written in a mostly impartial way, I think it's more of a compliment to Real Madrid's strong team play and relative independence from a single player (regardless of how talented he is) than anything else. Messi may come out 'looking good in the picture' when we look at that table, but not Barcelona as a team... At least that's how I took it.

What I mean is, despite being Messi vs. Ronaldo, this has more to do with Barcelona vs. Madrid as teams in the proper sense of the term, in my opinion.

[yeats]

i agree that the statistics themselves have much more to do with team play and varieties of offensive combinations. it's just really tiresome to see everything about barca and madrid filtered though the GREATEST RIVALRY OF ALL TIME prism.

[untxi]

I agree.

What I found interesting about this analysis was precisely the fact that it took both Messi and Ronaldo out of the picture.

[verses]

You can't just take a player out, though. If Ronaldo and Messi didn't exist, there would be other players playing in those positions, and the team dynamic would be completely different. If Ronaldo and Messi didn't exist, other players would score more goals.

[untxi]

Absolutely, but it's still an (albeit very flawed) way of comparing the dynamics of both teams and their reliance on a single player. But I completely agree, that's why I said the analysis is completely futile (and for more than that reason alone).

[verses]

I suppose, but it depends on how you interpret it. At the moment, Barcelona doesn't have a ton of goal scorers, with Alexis off and Villa out for a lot of the season. Whereas there are more "on" goalscorers on RM with Benzema and Higuain. Our team just scored more goals this year; we just beat the all-time European season record with 121, because we had three goalscorers who had amazing form. Barcelona could have scored more goals if Alexis and Cesc had been on better form, because even in the few Barcelona games I watched, I saw them miss opportunities that didn't take away from Messi's opportunities - let alone what would happen if they had more of a reason to pass the ball to Alexis

[kindofshy]

Under Pellegrini Pipita scored 27 league goals and Cris 26. I remember this because during the season Marca were cheering on Ronaldo for the Pichichi even though Pipita was a couple ahead of him for most of it.

[guad]

Teamwork > Individualities.

[verses]

Like 15- second goals!

[marsyke]

Depending on your alliance you can say:
Messi>Ronaldo, because of more goals and assists and more important for the team or
Real Madrid>Barcelona because they don't rely that much on one player

I knew that Barcelona was very dependent on Messi this season, but I'm rather surprised at how dependent. I don't think there is anyone who can replace him currently so Pep was incredibly lucky that he didn't get injured.

[verses]

Or Ronaldo > Messi because he scored almost as many goals on a team with two other 20+ goalscorers.

It's just incredibly open to interpretation, which is why I don't think it's a worthwhile debate.

[bleeding_dry]

Considering all our other strikers got injured, it's no surprise we depended so much on Messi.

[untxi]

Guys, since this is an incredibly speculative article and not exactly worthwhile news, and given the 'controversy' it's been provoking... I can delete it if you think it's for the best.
I have no particular attachment to it as it took me 5 minutes to make, lol.

[yeats]

keep it! don't worry...we're mocking the article, not you.

[verses]

nah, it's cool, just expect a lot of "ugh this debate is stupid" comments.

[jenny_jenkins]

I think it's really interesting, actually!

Says more about the rest of the league though.