Oranje playmaker Wesley Sneijder has confessed that Real Madrid’s failure to boost their squad depth during the summer has affected their title charge this season.
After successfully defending their La Liga crown last term, Real Madrid decided to rely largely on the squad they had to compete for a third successive title this campaign.
But their unpredicted spate of serious injuries has severely ravaged the squad, and midfielder Wesley Sneijder admits that the team are paying the price for the club’s failure to bring in significant reinforcement during the summer.
“I think our lack in depth has affected us at times, especially when we’ve have so many injuries,” he said during an interview with fifa.com.
“But even so, I believe that there’s enough quality in this squad for us to win the league title and the atmosphere in the dressing room is very good "
The 24-year-old also acknowledged that perennial title rivals, Barcelona have a great opportunity to prevent Los Blancos from capturing a third straight title, but he assured that anything can still happen from now til the end of the campaign.
“Barca are in with a chance of winning the title because they have a very good team and they are playing fantastic football. But every team will go through a bad patch. It’s a long season."
“As for Madrid, we still have some major objectives to challenge for in order to finish the season on a high."
“We just have to work together with unity to get on the right track. And if we’re unable to play nice football, we need to find some other way to win games,” he stressed.
Madrid are currently fifth in the standings, 12 points behind Barcelona, but the ‘White House’ have moved quickly to strengthened the squad by signing Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Lassana Diarra for the winter trade period, while also recalling Dani Parejo from his loan spell at Queens Park Rangers and poised to sign a right-winger within the next month.