Madrid relax before the first corner

Marcelo tries to protect a ball against Cadista Malbasic.Bernat Armangue / AP

Beyond the multi-organ failure suffered against Cádiz (0-1), the collapse of Madrid this Saturday certified the suspicion that the previous games had already left: the loss of balance.

On this concept, a mantra for Zidane in the success of the

, the whites built the last title with just the right shine and great efficiency.

However, that team capable of taming matches and knowing how to wait for their moments has been relaxed.

Where before it showed reliability, now it exhibits doubt.

The same sensation offered by the players less used by the coach, in the pillory after the Cadiz shaking.

The general blackout against the Andalusians also pointed to an old sin in the dressing room, the lack of consistency in the guerrilla war that is such a tiring tournament, and which has led him to repeat the summit only once in the last three decades.

"They have had more desire," warned Zidane.

In these first five games, the Whites receive 2.4 more shots than at the end of last season

To the well-known difficulties of Madrid to pierce the opposing goal (to zero in two crashes and only six goals), the cracks in its own defensive system have been added.

In these first five duels, he has received an average of 2.4 more shots per game (11.4 compared to nine the previous year), the best snitch of this growing threat.

In four of these matches they shot him more than ten times, when in the final ten days of the last championship that only happened in half of the commitments.

Cádiz punished him 15 times and Betis, 16, figures that were not given in all the summer confusion.

Courtois, almost the only certainty of Madrid in this start of the course, has gone out to several key interventions by performance.

Zizou, very given to mechanically repeating phrases from one day to the next, or from one campaign to another, traced the same expression in a week after beating Valladolid and Levante: "Courtois has saved us."

No rest possible for Casemiro

The cracks and the return of classic vices appear in the first important moment of the season, with the start of the Champions League (it is played almost every week until December) and the next trip to the Camp Nou.

In view of such a tight schedule, which in the case of the greats has practically joined the previous year with this one, Zidane decided to rest Casemiro in two of these first five league games.

However, on both occasions he had no choice but to rectify himself and give a clue to the Brazilian, the only one without a double in the squad.

In San Sebastián he came out in the second half and against Cádiz, after the break to contain the collapse.

Zizou arranged on Saturday a touch field center (Modric, Kroos and Isco) with the intention of opening routes in the Cadiz jungle, but the failure was absolute.

Neither could they progress in attack (Modric suffered his record of losses in the League: 12 in 45 minutes) nor did they know how to protect themselves from the visitors bites until the intermission.

Nobody had shot more at home to Madrid (5) in this tournament in a first half since Sevilla in 2017.

Against Cádiz, the white dressing room fell into an old sin: inconsistency in the League

The blackout was so great that the afternoon started in the second minute with a rude error from Kroos in a pass inside the area to Nacho that ended with Sergio Ramos saving the goal on the line.

Many of the

ZZ behind failed and was between little and nothing.

The trigger made it clear that the right wing without Carvajal is stubborn and that the left is more and more of Mendy.

The collapse especially pointed to the less common, Isco, Lucas Vázquez, Nacho and already Marcelo, all of them, in addition, very much appreciated by the coach, who avoided more changes in the dressing room this summer with players owned by the club who were on loan.

In a rotation system as intensive as that applied by Zidane, the lack of certainty in a B-unit accentuates the vertigo.

And more so if unit A has not distinguished itself in its career by virtue of performing on long distances like the League.

"If you don't have rhythm in a First Division game, it's complicated," the coach recalled Saturday night.

Just a year ago, Madrid came out badly from their visit to Mallorca.

He appeared with a B lineup (Odriozola, James, Militão and Jovic) and several of them (the first two, especially) ended up in the broken toy storage room.

After four days, he had to go to Istanbul to play a

with Mourinho's name ringing in his ears.

Then he managed to hold on and ended up triumphing.

Twelve months later, with almost the same squad, a League conquered and this time without any threatening name on his head at the moment, Zizou faces the challenge of another square.