There is always something to argue about in this damned sport. I’m not complaining, though I have complained about: the decline of the honest-to-god fullback, Jürgen Klinsmann playing Michael Bradley as a number ten, Barcelona’s midfield being kind of bad when they won the treble a few years back, Vicente Del Bosque’s trying to keep tiki-taka alive after Xavi got old, wingers who can’t cross and don’t score, the high press as a solution to everything, the dire boringness of Louis Van Gaal’s United, the fetishization of the 4-3-3, and the quiet struggle of the holding midfielder. The indefiniteness of soccer—this is a capricious game in which people debate whether final scores feel fair—makes it fertile ground for griping and philosophizing. At worst, this is weaponized into infantile my-team-has-actually-never-lost-a-match whining, but that’s like going to the movies to stare at your phone. Beyond that, there are the politics of style and the finer points of strategy. Provided you don’t take it too seriously, this is the most fun you can have picking nits.

In that spirit: Real Madrid are the best team in the world and also kind of a drag. That first part doesn’t need justifying. Back-to-back Champions Leagues—one narrow win on penalties, one second-half blowout—and a Liga title run during which they were almost always either leaders or in second place with a game in hand speaks for itself. The second thing stems from what’s usually wrong with Madrid, such that anything is ever wrong with them, which is that they’re a club hostile to ideas. You don’t turn to Madrid for tactical innovation or aesthetic vision or a common geist among their fans. Not unlike Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United, they are an overwhelming accumulation of talent playing in (only occasionally perfect) harmony. They’re dominant because just look at them. They rack up lots of goals because pretty much any team in Europe would be happy with Karim Benzema as their striker and he’s the third-most prolific scorer on Madrid’s forward line. They’re stocked with internationals—some of whom barely get any minutes This summer, they bought one of Atlético Madrid’s best academy products, Theo Hernández, so he can back up Marcelo. 

Yet they still play, on average, twenty minutes to a half-hour of really, really good soccer per match. This might sound preposterous to anyone who doesn’t watch them on a weekly basis—you’re forgiven; the numbers and highlights lie convincingly—but Madrid play many of their opponents to a draw for the majority of their games, then suddenly Luka Modrić gets a look in his eyes like he’s just eaten and understood the Encyclopedia Britannica and that’s the end of Leganés’s respectability. Outside of these bursts of hyper-competence—Juventus know all about it; they got a heavier-than-usual dose—Madrid can be gallingly flat and unimaginative, all overshot diagonal balls and Ronaldo free kicks commingling with the pigeons. 

Here’s a theory from a barroom Rafa Benítez: Zinedine Zidane has a stoic charisma that keeps the great tapestry of egos at the Santiago Bernabéu woven tightly, but he’s not much of a tactician. Because he doesn’t feed his players theory or detailed instructions, they’re prone to listlessness, especially when they’re playing against opposition they feel they can beat without too much trouble. That they so often do isn’t an indictment of their style, but it makes them less compelling to watch than, say, Sevilla’s shattering geometry under Jorge Sampaoli or the tirelessness of Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool. Toni Kroos clips the ball into a space in the penalty area the size of a laundry hamper, Ronaldo rifles it home, and then the rest of the game is getting through the workday. 

Not that Zidane’s a dummy. He understands what Carlo Ancelotti never did, which is that you can’t play Kroos or Modrić as de facto holding midfielders. Bringing Casemiro into the starting lineup in 15-16 was the single most impactful thing he’s done during his time as Madrid manager. Casemiro is more than just muscle and keen positional awareness—he recycles the ball quickly and even makes a sharp run into the box on occasion—but that’s what he provides Real Madrid that they don’t otherwise have in abundance. Marcelo’s a fantastic dribbler and crosser, but he operates far up the field in most matches and needs covering for. Kroos can be lackadaisical tracking back. Ronaldo is a one-way player these days and Bale has apparently forgotten everything he learned as a fullback at Tottenham. Without Casemiro, Madrid are an unbalanced mess. So, in other words, still a team that won the Champions League in 2014. But anyway, you can always play smarter.

The remnant of the Ancelotti era that Zidane won’t dispatch with is Ronaldo and Bale playing together, which has never totally worked. Bale is a slightly cut-rate young Ronaldo—a winger who gets narrow whenever he can—and present-day Ronaldo is essentially a striker who claims to play on the left. Benzema’s willingness to occupy whatever space is available, whether it’s in the box or near a touchline, helps mitigate crowding, but the team makes more sense whenever Bale is out with a hamstring pull (which is like two to three months per season) and Isco slips into a drifting creative role behind Benzema and Ronaldo. Zidane isn’t adventurous enough to use this setup when Bale is fully healthy, adhering to what’s now become the old company line that the BBC play together when they’re all fit. Zizou’s fortunate, in a way, that the Welshman's thighs are made of permanently taut yarn.

But Madrid wouldn’t be Madrid if they weren’t at least a little bit in their own way. This low-grade frustration is their defining quality—that and winning everything. They don’t reform because they don’t need to. They are indisputably great and that’s the only argument they care about. Method and style and ethos are unimportant. It’s like they don’t understand the sport. Then you study their trophy case and consider that you might be in the wrong here. It’s hard to argue with their dominance, so you argue around it instead. This is at least something to occupy the mind, living beneath Real Madrid’s sky, as we all do.

More 'End-To-End Stuff': Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund