L-I-V-E-R-P-Double O-L Liverpool FC

[Macca]

ooh, id say Marcelo is prob the 2nd most vilified Madrid player over the last few seasons. I love watching him play, but boy, the Spanish media has very little time for him. For all of his excellence hes always gonna be thought of way less than blokes like Ronaldo, Bale, Modric, Ramos, Casillas, Benzema.

To be fair though, the way the same Madrid fans cant come to love Isco and Asensio makes me think they are all a bunch of dolts anyways.
Again, I dig watching Alba. But he, like Alves, seems to be more known as the dude that gets the through ball from Iniesta and gives it to Messi rather than anything he himself is responsible for. Poor Alba's a freaking footnote in the last dozen years of Barca excellence*.






*and thats no shade, if you're good enough to crack that team and consistently produce, then not one person (except Griff) on the planet can talk smack to you.

I can't claim to know how the spanish media treat/think of these guys. My impression of Marcelo in Madrid was basically that he was one of the few players able to provide spark and x-factor, creativity, when the going got tough and they were struggling to break a team down. He seemed able to come up with the cross, dribble, pass to create something from nothing. Not many others in the team were taking up that role.

I'm not a particularly big fan of Alba. But his partnership and understanding with Messi is pretty crucial to Barca in recent years. He's no footballing genius, but he makes the right runs at the right times to provide the option, and executes his pass to whoever finishes well with amazing regularity. As you said, how often has he cut back to Messi on the 18 to tuck one away. The other is Messi cutting in from right wing and switching to Alba breaking the defensive line who squares to *striker* to tap in.

You're right that he won't go down as a great. But jeez you notice a big difference in how the team plays and attacks when he's not on the field.

edit - and in itself, finding a pass to someone in the 18 yard box when there's 10 blokes in it is in itself a difficult task that many professional players have pretty low success rates on.