“Equilibrio” That one word was ever present in Carlo Ancelotti’s press conferences since he signed up to be Madrid’s coach. It was also the one thing that Mou-drid lacked. For all of Mourinho’s tactical abilities, his team were incredibly one-dimensional at times. Soak up pressure and use the passing of Alonso and Ozil to release Benzema, Di Maria and that Portuguese fella to destroy teams on the break. Madrid winning the ball in their own half and scoring a goal under 10 seconds was an incredibly common sight.
Perfect strategy for playing against teams like Barcelona who would have 60-70% ball possession, barely any shots on target and end up losing. However against teams who turned the tables, it was rather less successful. Dortmund destroyed Madrid in the first leg simply because Madrid seemed incapable of keeping the ball and controlling the game. Sir Alex nearly dumped Madrid out by having United defend deep and break with pace. Both the clubs did one very crucial thing, mark Xabi Alonso out of the game. Klopp was incredibly blunt when he mentioned that you shut down Alonso, you shut down Madrid.
That was the first thing Ancelotti tried to fix. The early part of the season was rough, Madrid were disjointed, lacked tempo, intensity and scraped through their matches. But like Liverpool last year there was a sense of improvement. Step by step Ancelotti was closing in on THE formula. A lot of people who wrote off Madrid for losing the El Clasico overlooked one key detail, Atletico Madrid and Barcelona were playing at the peak of their abilities and had still not run away with the lead. Real Madrid were always within touching distance. You always sensed that Real Madrid had tremendous scope for improvement while Barca and Atletico did not That is exactly what has happened come January. Barca and Atletico were still playing as well as they did at the start of the season, Madrid kept improving and finding new gears to switch into.
There are a few key reasons for this dramatic improvement:-
1) Injury to Khedira and shift to 4-3-3