It's odd to see popular contrarianism to be so convinced of such a radical idea - namely, that Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale will fail together. They're too similar, apparently, and there's no room to fit in two tall, athletic wingers who score lots of goals and like to score solo goals and shoot from distance.
Considering the possibility Bale and Ronaldo may be unstoppable
Many people seem convinced that Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo won’t be able to play together at Real Madrid. But what if they can, and do, and are very, very good?
Denis Doyle
Perhaps we might like to at least consider the possibility that might not be the case. In fact, they might be very good together. They might be completely unstoppable and lead a team that nobody else on earth can compete with, even. Something like this doesn’t come along too often, but we’re in uncharted waters. Ronaldo appeared to be a one-of-a-kind player, and yet now a similar beast has come along and been inserted into the same team. There is no reference point from which to make a judgement, so we can only go from the fact that they are both very, very, very good players.
It's certainly less daft than Barcelona buying Neymar - Madrid have a far better-balanced team, with a solid enough defence and good midfield. They may not need Gareth Bale, but Manchester United didn't need Robin van Persie. Arsenal didn't need Mesut Ozil. Sometimes simply buying the best player you possibly can is a legitimate strategy, and one with, injuries aside, less potential to go badly wrong than attempting to rebalance the entire team.
Instead of looking for players to provide Ronaldo with the supporting cast he needs, Real have simply said “you know that player we bought who scores goals from out of nothing, on his own and from miles out who wins us more games than any one player ever has? Why don’t we just buy another one of those?” It’s a simple idea, but not necessarily a simplistic one. In that sense, it’s not actually a break. It’s more of the same - taking a look at what works and using it again.
There has, of course, been talk that Bale will be deployed at left-back this weekend in order to cram him into the team. As bizarre and alluring the prospect of seeing him and Ronaldo on the same flank would be, even just once, it shows there are plenty of options for combining the two. Before Mesut Ozil was sold, Carlo Ancelotti had experimented with him alongside Ronaldo behind the striker in a christmas tree, one possible way in which the two could both have the freedom to be at their most effective.
Although no move in football is too big to fail, there is no possible reason to assume that this plan will be anything other than a huge success. For every problem Real Madrid have in accommodating the two in their team, their opponents will have twice as many in factoring their presence into their own plans. It’s very difficult to see how, if both are on form, they could possibly be stopped.
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When questioning why David Moyes has failed to deploy Shinji Kagawa in this Manchester United side, therefore surely elevating the team to new levels of effectiveness and beauty through his inevitably wonderful performances, it's worth questioning what he's basing his decision on.
He could be basing his decision on many of the people who want to see him included - that they’ve imagined him as the Japanese Juan Roman Riquelme, that he magically becomes a far better player when deployed a few metres to the right, that he’s perfectly fit and that he’s the best option in the side.
Alternatively, he may be basing his view on - and apologies for going slightly Dawkins - empirical evidence, whereby Kagawa has often, through no fault other than his own, been anonymous and ineffective. Anonymous and ineffective in between fine performances and excellent goals, of course, but there were too many games last year, particularly in bigger encounters, where his contribution was minimal.
Before considering whether Kagawa is able to completely transform a side: can anyone, off the top of their head, think of one great pass he’s produced for United? He’s never been a playmaker, and anybody expecting him to become one is likely to be disappointed. He could very well go on to be an excellent option for the club as a second striker, but for anyone predicting that he can transform this United side, the wish is probably the father of the thought.
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