Real Madrid and its nightmare with the new Champions League format: keep an eye on the numbers

Writer: Gabriel Pato Cantero

Past the particular outcomes, one of many keys that’s identified is the doable issue for Actual Madrid to adapt to the brand new league part of the Champions League. The change in format has altered the normal dynamics of the competitors, forcing groups to raised handle their efforts and keep a excessive degree for extra video games.

The brand new format of the Champions League, an added impediment

The variation to the brand new format of the Champions League has not been the very best for the whites. The league part, with extra video games and fewer margin for error, has fully modified the best way we compete. Groups that beforehand managed effort and time at the moment are pressured to keep up a constantly excessive degree to have a bonus within the playoffs, one thing that’s not favoring the group now led by Álvaro Arbeloa in these editions. On this new state of affairs, errors are paid for extra shortly and regularity turns into much more essential. Actual Madrid, traditionally deadly in qualifying rounds, though not a lot recently, now faces the problem of transferring that hierarchy to an extended and extra demanding preliminary part, during which the target was at all times the highest 8 and in neither of the 2 editions has it been achieved, on this new format.

Ramón de Mon factors out that it isn’t an accident and that the lack of degree is plain within the Champions League, primarily based on a stunning reality: because the whites lifted the Fifteenth, they’ve had 13 victories and 9 defeats within the prime continental competitors. Actual Madrid continues to compete, but it surely not dominates Europe with the identical authority as in earlier cycles.