Sid Lowe with a poetic piece on ESPNFC on Zidane being back at Real Madrid:
Luka Modric, Marcelo, Isco: they were gone. And the rest. Modric, Marcelo, Isco … they’re back. And the rest, too.
I find it remarkable that Isco is now back to the form that made him the ultimate wildcard in Real winning the double in 2017. Zidane deserves immense credit for this.
There’s something of Spring 2017 about his team now: the one year of those three when Madrid won the Champions League and they won la Liga as well, the one year of those three when you could say, with some confidence, that they probably were the best team in Europe.
Sid makes an excellent distinction here. The 2016 Champions League winning team relied on graft. Many would argue that the 2018 team was just downright lucky. The 2017 team though, that had something special, the ability to beat and outplay any kind of team.
Real aren’t perfect as Lowe points out later in the article. But they are looking good, the closest I have seen to the 2017 gold standard. Whether Zidane has a clear playing identity is up for debate. What isn’t, is that he is unquestionably the right man for Real Madrid.