Zidane, Raúl or Figo - who is the most important to Madrid?

What makes Real so different and stronger than all other teams is the Raúl-Zidane cooperation...

Real wouldn't lose much if Figo or Ronaldo (maybe both) quits...IMHO they 2 are both overrated.Guti does great job,much better than Ronaldo when he plays.

I think it differs in terms of how you define 'importance'.

If it is giving 100%, looking for spaces, pulling defenders from positions and exquisite finishing, then RAUL.

If it is tacital variations, dribbling and beating men with the ball at feet, perfect ball distribution and getting the best out of every team player, then ZIDANE.

And although FIGO has gone off the boil, I would still rate him as important in delivering crosses, dribbling and switching sides; par not the same level as Zidane or Raul.

Ze da Fiel said:

today Raul is the best player of the world IMO. The guy is doing magic on the pitch!

plus the first half against Man Utd, was the best performance i have seen by a team this season!!

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Wow! Ze, I'm shocked man. I think that's the first time I've heard you say something so positive about a Spanish player. Could it be that the trip to Spain has shown you the light? Dude,will you be changing your yello and green colors for the red and gold of Spain anytime soon?

Obvious Raul

It's Raul. and I think he has space to improve in future.

ZZ is the best football player in the world, which doesn't mean he is essential to Real Madrid. He has fight spirit too, but not for every game. I like to watch his playing when he is playing with his graceful style. For other games I just wished that ZZ would be substituted early. He is not a god especially when he is getting tired.

I like Figo too. But I think he is not as good as ZZ technically.

All in all, I think Raul is the most important player in Real Madrid.
When you watch Real Madrid game, you would get fun from ZZ's play, but you will be given victory by Raul's play. Sometimes I feel Raul's play is not so graceful, maybe that's the reason why so many people ignorant him. When I watched game against MU, I find Raul-ZZ's compination is just unbelievable. and Raul's performance is so great and enjoyable. I guess he has learned a lot from ZZ. I'm not sure if he is the best football player now in the world, but I'm sure he will be better and better.

Raul.
'nuff said

PS: Wierd, no brazilian fans barging in demanding Ronaldo is :tongue: lol

Da_J said:

Raul.
'nuff said

PS: Wierd, no brazilian fans barging in demanding Ronaldo is :tongue: lol

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Dang Da_J, now you gone and blown it! actually some could include Roberto Carlos, he puts sooo much pressure in the left flanks, in the man u game they had no answer for him charging down the sidelines

here's a great article

A dance for which football lovers must be truly thankful

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A Brazilian journalist once said that the one-twos between Pele and Tostao offered convincing proof of the existence of God. One is tempted to a similar conclusion after watching Zidane and Raúl stroke the ball around on the congested edge of the Manchester United penalty area last Tuesday night, graceful and unhurried as if they were playing alone in a park.
The supernatural peaks that Real Madrid scaled during that 3-1 Champions League victory at the Bernabeu have not been seen on a football pitch since Brazil 1970: the World Cup-winning team that had always served until now as the benchmark for the sublime.

The appraisal needed updating. Players were not as fit or as fast, spaces were not as compressed, in the days of Pele, Tostao, Rivelino, Gerson and Jairzinho. Three decades later, the Real Madrid of Zidane and Raúl - consecrated now surely as the two greatest players in the world - and Figo, Roberto Carlos and Ronaldo have offered us the wonderfully reassuring reminder that it can still be done, that perfection, or something very much like it, is still possible. Never mind all the money in the sport, the disputes over satellite TV rights, the building of brand names, football - the game itself as originally conceived by some inventively playful Englishmen 150 years ago - is bigger than all of that.

Because what is so great about this Madrid side is what was great about Brazil 1970: the Corinthian freshness with which they go about their business. Cruyff's Ajax in the 1970s and the Milan of Gullit, Rijkaard and Van Basten were both, in their different ways, brilliant. But in a methodical, rigorous, solemnly professional sort of way. This lot give the impression that they play chiefly for fun. Vicente del Bosque, the Madrid coach, is the most staid, self-effacing of men, but spend half an hour talking to him about his football philosophy and, never mind tactics, the word that will recur is 'spectacle'.

They want to win, and they do win, but an indispensable part of the team's duties is to put on a show. They are efficient, organised, successful team players, but they do all the circus tricks. Partly that comes from the tradition of the club. Real Madrid fans are not loyal in the way of English fans. They are fussy. They demand not just results but high levels of artistic expression. At Anfield they keep cheering Heskey, doggedly, week after week, but at the Bernabeu if Ronaldo fluffs a shot or fails to control a pass they will boo him off the pitch. The same goes for the team when they play manifestly below expectations.

It is the ethic of the bullfight. Killing the bull, getting a result, is not the point. It's the manner of the killing that counts. The artistry. The flourish. Those were the images that came to mind on Tuesday night. This Manchester United is no ordinary bull. There's pedigree there. There's fight. But, especially during that magical first half, the faint-hearted spectator must have longed for it to be all over, for the brave beast to be put out of its misery. Twisted and turned this way and that, all the United players could do was stand and stare, restraining what might have been the urge to nod their heads in appreciative wonder and break into a round of applause.

Real Madrid tradition is one thing. Making the dream come alive is something else altogether. What has happened is that under the guidance of their heroically ambitious president, Florentino Perez, and his sporting director, Jorge Valdano, they have assembled an astonishingly talented collection of individuals capable of playing together in perfect harmony.

The devil, of course, is in the detail. They play such beautiful music because each has such perfect command of his instrument. We are talking pure skill here. No team possess more players blessed with such an impeccable first touch. No one alive receives the ball with such exquisite cushioning, standing still or on the run, as Figo or Zidane. Yet rarely do the Real players have to push their masterful control to the limit because the weight, pace and direction of the passes they receive from each and every one of their team-mates are so consistently fine. In turn this gives them the time to look up and ponder their next option, keeping their opponents always one step behind.

Several passages of play illustrated the point in Tuesday's game, most of them occurring on the left side of midfield, where Zidane bestrode the stage within a space not much bigger than half a tennis court on the periphery of the United penalty area. The players attempting to police these tight confines would be Roy Keane, David Beckham, Gary Neville and Rio Ferdinand, assisted as the situation became increasingly unmanageable by Wes Brown and Nicky Butt. The assailants would be Zidane, Raúl and Roberto Carlos, who alone would cause more than enough mayhem among the mightily experienced and undoubtedly talented United players - dancing around them in tight little circles, threading and weaving the ball between and around their legs - until Figo would come cantering over from the right wing, eager to dazzle on the night when the whole world was watching to see who was better, he or Beckham. Whereupon the space would open up, the level of danger would suddenly increase and circus would give way to palpable threat.

Above all, the difference between the two sides was a difference in the sense of time. All great players in all sports appear to have more time to do what they do than the ordinarily talented. Zidane is the world's best footballer because he has more time than anyone else, meaning that he requires fewer milliseconds than anybody else to get the ball - either when he is controlling it or passing it - to do exactly what he wants it to do. That is why, against Manchester United, he gave the impression at times that he was treating his opponents with contempt. It was not that. He is not the contemptuous type. He regards the likes of Giggs and Beckham with respect. It is just that the game is much easier for him that it is for them.

Consider this statistic, courtesy of the Spanish sports daily AS . Zidane made 75 passes in that game, only eight of which failed to find their target. Beckham made 46, 16 of which went astray.

But a great team cannot live by Zidane alone. The problem is who else to single out. Raúl, as Alex Ferguson is the first to acknowledge, is sensational: his positioning, his intelligence on the ball, his devilish eye for goal, his work rate in attack as well as defence, plus the sheer lust to win that he transmits to the rest of the players. Then you have two centre-halves in Hierro and Helguera who started life as elegant, goal-scoring midfielders; and Makelele, the workhorse who covers every inch of the pitch, who does what is needed to allow Zidane even more time and space to do his stuff, Roberto Carlos to abandon his left-back duties and join the fun up front. Yet Makelele too is an impeccable player of the ball. The AS stats make the point once again. Of 72 passes he made against United, 64 went exactly where he intended.

Gary Neville, who missed more than half the passes he attempted on Tuesday night, said afterwards that playing Real Madrid had been like playing the Harlem Globetrotters. With the perhaps unintended assumption that United were therefore the doltish stooges, gamely making up the numbers. It was not, in truth, quite so simple.


Because, while we shall forever remember that game for the exhibition Madrid gave us, the facts show that United could have won, or drawn, or certainly salvaged a very respectable 3-2 defeat. Had the Swedish referee not missed the most glaringly obvious penalty since penalties were invented by Brown on Ronaldo, and another marginally less obvious one by O'Shea on Guti, Madrid might have scored five, of course. But United had at least as many clear chances to score, Van Nistelrooy missing two that five times out of 10 he would put away.

Real dominated the second half in terms of artistic impression but if those had been the only 45 minutes played we would be remembering a magnificently contested game of football rather than the Madrid 'recital', as the Spanish football press say; rather than the merry dance Zidane and company led the team that barely a month ago had beaten Juventus 3-0 away. A dance for which all those of us who love football must be truly thankful.

For to be a football fan is to be doomed to a life of frustration. It is Waiting for Godot . A waiting, hopeful waiting, for a beautiful piece of play, for an individual to do something thrillingly out of the ordinary, for a team to string together three or four one-touch passes culminating in something close to a goal. It happens so rarely. You have to be so long-suffering, so madly optimistic. Usually we are obliged to feed on crumbs. All the fuss about Wayne Rooney's performance against Turkey 10 days ago offers a typical case in point. He made a couple of exciting runs, neither of which culminated in a goal, and a whole nation drooled. Which is not to disparage either Rooney or the nation. That is the way things are with football.

And that is why Real Madrid's display the other night was so magically memorable. We had waited not weeks, not months, but years - decades - to see fantasy football like this. Everything came together. The biggest game between the two biggest teams in the world's best football competition provided the stage for the world's finest players to perform at the pinnacle of their ability. And the wonder of it all is that we have no idea ultimately how or why, on that particular night, it should have happened. Not even del Bosque, the first to dismiss the value of systems and to confess that football at its best is about one thing: the sheer God-given talent of the players. Del Bosque says: 'To those who say that there's no merit whatsoever in coaching this team, my reply is,"You're absolutely right!" There is nothing at all that I can say to contradict them.'



:star: :strong: :star: :strong: :star: :strong: :star: :strong:

HALA MADRID

Re: here's a great article

Che said:

The supernatural peaks that Real Madrid scaled during that 3-1 Champions League victory at the Bernabeu have not been seen on a football pitch since Brazil 1970: the World Cup-winning team that had always served until now as the benchmark for the sublime.

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Now that is overrating a team.
Anyway, I always thought that Brasil 1982 played better football than 1970, they just didnt' win.
This Real Madrid is class, the best club team I've ever seen play, but I've seen club teams play better football than that 3-1 victory.

Che said:

actually some could include Roberto Carlos, he puts sooo much pressure in the left flanks, in the man u game they had no answer for him charging down the sidelines

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Sorry to go slightly off topic, but in terms of importance to Madrid, I would place Roberto 2nd very slightly behind Raúl, and I mean very slightly, yes I said very slightly because I think Roberto Carlos is not only one of the greatest players EVER in football but I am not too sure that we would have had as much success if it wasn’t down to his extraordinary play and dominance in so many matches.

I am not too sure we will ever see such a great player, Roberto is so unique, I am sure we will see another Zinedine with such amazing football grace and touch, but Roberto? No I don’t think so.

I must say I am so scared to think of what we will do with the left back position when Roberto eventually leaves Madrid.

Roberto Carlos is worth about 3 very, very, very good players, and I’m not exaggerating nor am I kidding.

So often I read people say that they hate Roberto and that Roberto is arrogant and Blah Blah Blah, those people really get me angry, they are so stupid.

Roberto Carlos Da Silva from Garca (Sao Paulo - Brasil), already one of the 10 all time greatest players ever to have lived? Of course he is, easily.

The most important thing about Roberto is that he's a player of his own kind. Certainly when he leaves, we'll have to play differently and there will be a lot of things to arrange.
This said I would place him third behind Raúl and Zidane, with Figo -or even Casillas- fourth

I am going to have to go with Figo on this one. He plays like a step ahead of ZZ and about a step and a half over raul. But all three are the best three to ever be put on a field together.

kijj said:

I am going to have to go with Figo on this one. He plays like a step ahead of ZZ and about a step and a half over raul. But all three are the best three to ever be put on a field together.

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Really? I think he is a distant fourth, RC is way ahead of him. Just look at the Leverkusen game last year.

sagyv said:

My No.2 is roberto carlos - i just cant beleive no one beside José Mari wrote about it. what he did (and will do) for real madrid is 50 times more then what figo or zidan will do.

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I did

Go

Liternit,
please accept my apology for not seeing your comment about RC.
________
Vermont Medical Marijuana

sagyv said:

just read all this thread and i realy dont understand what u guys are talking about.
no doubt the most important player for madrid is raul.
just no doubt.
especially if you look at it over the years he played.

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Thing is sagyv, most people saying Zinedine and Luis are more important than Raúl don't:

1) Watch Real Madrid regularly

2) Haven't read the question properly.

The question is:

"Zidane, Raúl or Figo - who is the most important to Madrid?"

Not

"who is the best player?"

Anyone who has a clue about Real Madrid can only say one name....And that name is Raúl.

I have to say, I hate to say one is better than the other, the base of the team and most important and key parts of the team are and have been:

Casillas
Hierro
Roberto
Helguera
Makelele
Morienetes
Raúl

This opinion is based over a few years, these players have shown and proved their worth.

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I excluded Figo and Zidane because they are more recent purchases.