It’s never a master stroke. If Messi sinks a penalty kick they still lose. They took the air out of their team and they were burnt. We literally saw this happen. I don’t know how any manager in a competitive game especially would see that and think trying to 0-0 was a good idea
You're completely divorcing the tactics from the actual play on the pitch, as if tactics alone are the sole determinant of the outcome, and that's just wacky. Madrid still had to play the game and they played poorly. Even if they were a Messi PK away from a draw, they could reasonably conclude that without the mental errors they'd have achieved their objective, the exact same way a manager could set up to attack and lose with poor execution and individual mistakes.
I mean we can talk about what might have happened, but we saw what actually happened in reality. It’s not an exact science but Madrid’s tactics more or less gave Madrid, at the minimum, a 45 minute head start. And these were relatively evenly match teams, especially compared to some of the other matchups. If people are saying that no away goals is bad because of what happened in this game, I would say that the evidence of what actually shows the opposite. Ancelotti got it completely wrong by trying to game the no away goal thing and now he is also without at least two of his starting XI players next leg.
We did see what happened...they played/executed badly? *shrug*
It’s all good. But when you play for 0-0 it’s a very small margin for error, and my problem is that Madrid x PSG isn’t a mismatch. Madrid did not have to go for 0-0. Madrid is good enough to beat PSG. What they did, poor execution or not, dramatically decreased Madrid’s chances to advance to the next round. This was not David vs Goliath with David bunkering down. This was Ancelotti and Madrid trying to outsmart everyone and failing. If Madrid was significantly worse than PSG, maybe? But that wasn’t the case here.
That’s debatable. I think some sites had Madrid favored but I could be wrong
