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With 25% of possession, Cádiz beat Madrid in Valdebebas and with 18% they repeated in Carranza against Barça. No other team has brought down the big two this season to show that tenure isn't the only science. A politically incorrect theory but that Álvaro Cervera, a creative extreme in his days as a footballer, discusses on the field and wherever he is asked: “I admire teams that cultivate possession, but they despise us. In handball or basketball you try to win the game from the defense. In football that is frowned upon ” (follow today's game live on As.com).
Álvaro Cervera has been at Cádiz for five years, whom he took in Second B and was promoted to the First Division last season. It was at the beginning, after several consecutive punctures, when he came to the conclusion that the touch would not take him far: “It is better to die with your ideas than with those of another. So I decided to take the fat off the team and try to be direct. “. Overly direct. Cádiz is the team that adds the fewest passes per game (half that of Madrid) and the one that has the least the ball (37%, five points below Alavés, second to last), but with only 27 goals it has 36 points. 39 were enough to save them in the last six leagues. So it is one step away from the shore.
“I train to win, not to play well. And it is easier to stop making mistakes than to get it right,” defends the coach. In a word, he puts himself in profile before a recent study by ESPN, which after putting various football parameters into the shaker (shots, precision, verticality, game changes …) concluded that the yellow team was the least fun of the major leagues. El Carranza must be the only place in the city where the carnival does not pass.
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In any case, his team has also had ups and downs. It started well outside, but did not win at home until December, at Barça. It then fell into a sinkhole between the end of January and the end of February, adding a point of 18. In a sequence of four consecutive defeats he conceded fifteen goals. After that storm the sun shines again: only one match lost in the last six and only four goals conceded in that section. It is his rear that has saved him, because he is very short on goal. The very veteran Negredo, with seven goals, is his only great asset in attack. This winter two more forwards arrived, Saponjic and Sobrino, who have not yet made their debut. For the game, Cervera will continue without being able to count on Perea and Álex Fernández and Cala is doubtful. Neither of them played Celta on Sunday.
Madrid remains precarious. Zidane patches his defense with Nacho and the return of Carvajal, to whom three injuries have only allowed him to play 12 games, but it prolongs its drama in the center of the field. Once his sanction has been completed, Casemiro returns, but now Kroos (he dressed but did not play in Getafe) and Modric, the team's drivers, are out. So Zidane will have to re-fill a team tired of welding with midfielders.