So, today I get up and see that Real Madrid won their match yesterday (without Ronaldo) and I see that Barca allowed Bilbao to draw them. With Barcelona giving up the two points that gave Real Madrid the seat atop the Spanish Premier Division Table. With Real Madrid holding fast without their biggest star I am NOT prepared to take back what I said about them, but I do have to give them credit where credit is due.
They lost Ronaldo to a mysterious ankle injury that keeps getting worse and worse and even though they haven’t been perfect, they are atop the Table in LaLiga and what more can I ask for? If I were to crap on them now I’d be a total poser because they are holding it together. With that said, do I still think that they will fall apart? Yeah, but I may have to wait until March or April and I guess that’s ok. It seems that this team may take a different path than I originally thought to a Chernobyl-like meltdown.
Let’s take a recent team that may mirror Real’s upcoming journey.
The Patriots went 18-0 and had to kill themselves to finish the regular season perfectly. {I know that Real isn’t undefeated, but just think of how taxing it is to keep this up.} What happened in the Super Bowl? The Patriots lost to a 5 seed (the Giants) who played them tight in their last REGULAR SEASON game and lost only to come back and beat them in the Super Bowl. {Also remember that the Giants already had their playoff seed locked up BEFORE they played the Patriots at the end of the regular season. The Patriots were praying to go undefeated.} Then, in the Super Bowl, the Giants had nothing to lose so they got the Patriots at the worst time.
Madrid may be going down the same road. They aren’t undefeated, but they must be expending alot of emotional energy trying to keep it together without Ronaldo and how long, I ask you, can they continue to do this before it becomes too much. Honestly, if they went on a pretty bad slide in say…January…that might be good for them. If they continue on this nice run they may find themselves drained at the wrong time and end up handing LaLiga to Barca.
Now that would leave a mark…
