Real Madrid beat RB Salzburg 5-1 at the Santiago Bernabeu to cement their place in the Champions League top 24, helped by a dominant performance from their quartet of superstars. Here are three quick observations from the game:
How close is this to Real Madrid’s best ball retention eleven?
Having good players is one thing, but using them for the benefit of the team and also for oneself is complicated, and Real Madrid, at least in this match, seemed to have everything figured out perfectly. Real Madrid completely dominated from one point in the first half until the end of the match, and Salzburg had no answer for their ball handling.
It made me wonder: how close is this starting eleven to Real Madrid’s best eleven when it comes to keeping the ball, leaving aside injured players? It’s pretty close. You could throw Eduardo Camavinga and David Alaba into the mix, but other than that, there’s not much.
Real Madrid simply did not give the ball away. Luka Modric, timeless as he is, turned in another amazing performance, which makes it even more absurd to believe that he is closer to 40 than Endrick is to 20.
Dani Ceballos put in another fantastic performance (more on him later) and Jude Bellingham was also brilliant in possession. Vinicius Jr, Rodrygo and Kylian Mbappé cannot play on their day, and it is their day several times. It makes you wonder how good this team can be if they play like this more often. The resistance of the press must be immaculate with the players who The Whites boast, and against Salzburg it was like that.
The offensive works… shock
There have been doubts all season over whether Real Madrid’s versatile quartet of Rodrygo, Jude Bellingham, Vinicius Jr and Kylian Mbappé would work or not. It wasn’t like that, at least for a few months. They may struggle in the future, but ultimately this is a group of ridiculously talented players who are as selfless as they come – the chances of them burying opportunities and creating for each other were always high. They just needed time to click.
One can think about the balance of it all (maybe this wouldn’t work, or would work differently in a big game), but it’s a lot of fun to watch four of the best players in the world wreak havoc on a defenseless team in the Champions League. . Rodrygo scored two, Vinicius Jr scored two, Bellingham assisted two and Mbappé scored one. It was a brilliant performance by the quartet in every sense of the word, and each part did their job to perfection.
Bellingham deserves a lot of praise for the way he conducted himself on the field tonight. Like Modric, he was unplayable. Salzburg had no answer for him. Brilliant ballplaying, passing, dribbling, defending – everything you expected from the English superstar, he did and then some. Their night was interrupted, but their influence was not.
It seemed that Vinicius Jr needed these two goals more than everyone thought. He’s had some mediocre performances and obviously off-field issues have also played a part, but the brace should improve his confidence quite a bit. When he scored the first goal, he was more relieved than happy, and his subsequent performance was infinitely better than before.
Rodrygo’s second goal may be one of the best I have seen in a long time. His performance in the first half pushed Real Madrid towards a collective calm, and although his influence had, to some extent, diminished in the second half, his performance was too good to ignore.
Mbappé continued his good form by scoring his 19th goal of the season. He had some important passes in the build-up to a pair of Real Madrid goals in the first half and overall looked much more confident and active than he did in the first half of the season. Now he is also pressing well. Not bad for a failure, huh?
Photo by Álvaro Medranda/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images
Dani Ceballos, Real Madrid starter?
If you had shown me that subtitle at the beginning of the season, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.
But here we are, we are in January 2025 and we are currently seeing the best version of Dani Ceballos, as well as the most consistent. Ceballos appears in my watch articles almost every week and it’s hard not to include him. I want to talk about other things, but these 9/10 performances every week make me think otherwise.
Ceballos can do no wrong at the moment. The way he passes the ball, the way he moves with and without it, with so much determination and drive, while adding so much passion and confidence, helped by so much effort to make it all work. Ceballos had never looked so confident on the ball. The way he evades the press is exactly what Real Madrid needs these days.
It’s not like he’s doing a lot of fascinating things with the ball that make it to the back pages of the morning paper. He’s doing the little things (maintaining possession, distributing the ball all over the field, evading pressure, defending well) at such an incredibly high and consistent level that you have no choice but to consider him starter-level quality. right now.
Ceballos had 99 touches of the ball. He passed it 87 times with an incredible accuracy of almost 99%. He didn’t give the ball away even once. He also had five tackles, a block and an interception.
The Spaniard may not be the best player on the pitch, he may not even be Real Madrid’s best midfielder, but he fits the mold very well. He adapts so well to Real Madrid’s system that sometimes Ancelotti will have no choice but to start him. He is what Real Madrid needs right now. Averaging season highs in soccer basics is harder than most think, and Ceballos is doing it with great vigor.