Another week, another Jude Bellingham masterclass in a Real Madrid win.
Madrid were made to work for their win over SSC Napoli at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona on Tuesday evening, relying on the brilliance of Bellingham and a rather fortunate own goal to earn a 3-2 victory.
Here’s everything we learned from Madrid’s ninth win of the season in all competitions.
It’s a bold statement, but it’s one that’s hard to argue with right now.
While Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland can lay claim to the ‘best footballer in the world’ tag for various reasons, based on pure form during the 2023/24 season Bellingham has to be top of the pile right now.
If you like stats: the attacking midfielder has scored the same number of goals as Haaland and Mbappe despite not even being a striker.
If you like intangibles: he’s providing match-winning contributions while playing for the biggest club around with the weight of the world on his shoulders at just 20 years old.
On Tuesday evening, Bellingham once again proved to be the difference maker for Madrid, assisting the opener before scoring a seemingly Diego Maradona-inspired second in the stadium named after the legendary Argentine.
While Bellingham is proving to be a match winner for Madrid, at the other end of the park Kepa Arrizabalaga is threatening to be a match loser week in, week out.
The loanee has replaced Thibaut Courtois in goal after the Madrid number one suffered a season-ending ACL injury, and, as anyone who watched Chelsea in recent years could guess, he hasn’t exactly impressed thus far.
In typical Kepa fashion, the Spaniard flapped unnecessarily at a corner kick on Tuesday evening to gift Napoli a route back into the game in the first half, and he didn’t do too much after that to redeem himself.
The issue for Carlo Ancelotti’s side is that this wasn’t exactly an uncharacteristic error from Kepa, it was very much a characteristic one and one that we expect he’ll make a few more times this season.
Although Bellingham has been utterly stupendous thus far this season, Ancelotti can’t rely on the England international to win ever single game for his side.
That’s where Vinicius Junior comes in.
After a spell on the sidelines, Vini has returned to action in the past week and looked as sharp as ever in the win over Napoli in midweek – scoring a classic Vini goal in the first half.
Madrid coped fairly well while the Brazilian was injured, winning all but one of their games, but it’s explicitly clear that they need a fit and firing Vinicius if they’re going to have any chance of dethroning Manchester City in Europe this season.
Real Madrid’s centre-backs were beaten in the air by Victor Osimhen roughly 1,000 times during Tuesday evening’s game. And while Osimhen is good in the air, those aerial duel wins were more down to Antonio Rudiger and Nacho Fernandez’s inability to jump more than one foot in the air than anything else.
The same issues occurred when David Alaba was slotted into the backline instead of Nacho during the recent Madrid derby defeat at the Estadio Civitas Metropolitano, with all three goals Atleti scored coming from crosses into the penalty area.
And yes, you can point to the fact that Madrid have conceded the least amount of goals in La Liga as some sort of proof that their defence has actually been quite good this season, but we’ve seen clear weak points in the backline be exposed by quality opposition in recent weeks.
In the business end of the Champions League later in the season, expect those weak points to be exposed once again.
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