he's on valuable because he sells shirts.
the team should run through Di Maria. he's the one who can make it happen with the ball at his feet. who knows how to beat a man with a dribble and create chances for his team-mates. Cristiano's tap-ins and penalties don't make him a bad player, they make him a player who is reliant on his team-mates to score goals (his first miss today was because he started sprinting, expecting a pass into a space only he and his pace can get to tap the ball in. when the ball came straight to him, he found it stuck under his feet and fucked the shot).
comparisons with Messi are folly because he doesn't play that role. he cannot. his hubris has destroyed that part of him. he should be looked at as a forward who occasionally creates. but basically, he scores. lots and lots of goals. but he's a scorer.
stop giving him the ball 40 yards from goal and then making runs expecting him to beat men and find you. play him off the ball and give ballers like Di Maria and Benzema the rock. let them create the chances and let him finish them. stop calling him the BEST PLAYER on your team, stop elevating him above his peers, it just goes to his head and feeds the fallacy that he is an all-around player.
of course it would also help to play Benzema more than Higuain, which is what needs to happen for the team to have a coherent system (rather than a schizo one that switches between two totally different forwards every single game) and to make the most out of Cristiano's supreme scoring abilities.
but José doesn't have the balls to do that. for all his bluster he is a very conservative coach.
He is a protective coach. He will not go go against his players. Capello would do that, because Capello doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone except Emerson and Pannucci. Mourinho chooses to make his players feel massive but its coming up short because the players themselves aren't believing it, not anymore at least. I don't blame Mourinho for anything because he set everything in motion in the right direction and he approach the game in the best possible manner. Once you put the players out there, you cannot control what they do.
I said Ronaldo is the most valuable for a reason, I didn't say he was the best player. But here is the thing with Benzema, when you play him he will never over shadow Ronaldo. He scored the goal and he spent the entire game limiting himself just to set him self up. In fact, every player was trying to set Ronaldo up for a goal and when they did, Ronaldo wasted his chances. What did Fab do? Score his only chance from a way more difficult angle. And Mourinho knows this, he knows that Benzema will not but needs to leave Ronaldo's shadow and explode himself.
Ozil has fitness problems, has psychological issues too, against Barcelona, and add to that trying to look for Ronaldo all the time doesn't help. The excellent work we were doing in defense and defensive midfield was not going to last when we don't put the match beyond Barcelona. It was only a matter of time before the defense faultered. The first was Messi in the 6th minute and the second was Sanchez putting one past Casillas (brillianttttt goal).
Di Maria, Higuain both have developed their own personalities, have both developed mental strength beyond any player on their team and will do whatever it takes to help the team win, and it doesn't matter who scores to them. Which is why Mourinho keeps them in the game, not because he is Schizo, but he knows that there is mental strength found in Higuain not found in Benzema or Ronaldo or Ozil.
