For the first time in five years, Real Madrid won La Liga. Not only that, but they retained their Champions League crown to bag their first league and European Cup double since 1958, defeating Juventus 4-1 in the Cardiff final. There were promising signs when Zinedine Zidane took over midway through the 2015/16 campaign and he showed exactly what he could do with a full season in charge.
In terms of explaining their success, the strength of Real’s squad has to go down as the main reason. Zidane expertly rotated his team throughout the season and even played completely different lineups one week to the next, but the backups consistently delivered and very few points were dropped when they took to the field. Another factor in putting together a successful 2016/17 season was the fact that Los Blancos were able to score in every single game, even if they sometimes left it late. Sergio Ramos and co maintained a never-say-die attitude and last minute goals against Barcelona, Deportivo La Coruna and Sporting Gijon all contributed to the points total of 93. For the first time in several years, this Real Madrid team was more than just Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored the decisive goals in the final rounds of the Champions League, but who had a quieter campaign up until springtime. Given that the goalscoring burden was shared – all outfield players bar the rarely used Fabio Coentrao all scored at least once – Ronaldo probably wasn’t Real’s most important player this year, with that honour going to Sergio Ramos. Not only because he scored 10 times across all competitions, but because he also turned in one of his best centre-backing seasons for some time, while his role as captain was also vitally important.
