BERGAMO, Italy — After the 3-0 win over Girona on Saturday, Real Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti announced: “We’re back.”
Yeah, they’re not. At least not in terms of being a proper team, greater than the sum of its parts. And the fact that they lost another part — Kylian Mbappé — 35 minutes into Tuesday’s 3-2 win over Atalanta in the Champions League won’t help, even though they reclaimed another part in Vinícius Júnior.
The caveat is that they were playing Atalanta and, as Pep Guardiola famously said, playing La Dea “is as much fun as a trip to the dentist.” The good news is that Madrid won’t be facing Gian Piero Gasperini’s team — or anyone who plays like them — again for a long time. The bad news is there are still ways that Ancelotti’s team can, and must, improve.
Tuesday night highlighted many of Real Madrid’s flaws. Dani Ceballos showed (again) he is not a viable playmaker when there are guys in his grill. Lucas Vázquez is not someone you want to do much one-on-one defending (especially not against Ademola Lookman). And when Vinícius, Mbappé and Jude Bellingham are on the pitch, they can’t help but drift to the left. When — as Mbappé occasionally did — do try to keep their positions and spacing, they don’t look natural, like kids trying to impress the teacher.
That said, the win in Bergamo also emphasized two of the things that make Real Madrid so good: star power and grit. You just look at the scorers’ names on your favorite app — Mbappé, Vinícius, Bellingham — and you have evidence of that. Mbappé’s control and finish for the opener was next level. Vinícius impressed not so much with his goal — the result of a lucky bounce — but with the absurd pass for Bellingham that made it 3-1. As for Bellingham, the intelligent movement, powerful running and dead-eye finish say it all. You can lump Antonio Rüdiger in there too. His two stops on Charles De Ketelaere-bound crosses in the first half were critical, as was his leadership at the back. Yes, defenders can be stars too.
But then there’s the grit. That sense of seeing games out. Whether it was Vázquez eating up a whole minute of injury-time by staying down after a clash with Odilon Kossounou (and getting booked in the process), or Bellingham popping up all over the pitch to snuff out trouble late … this team has that intangible attitude of seeing wins over the line.
Gasperini’s Atalanta are special, even more so in the flesh
Pre-kickoff, the Atalanta Ultras’ tifo featured Gasperini as some sort of Europa League-wielding medieval knight astride a horse. Which is kinda funny since, in real life, Gasperini looks more like the bachelor uncle who shows up at family gatherings to laugh at his own jokes. But you can’t deny what he’s doing. Europa League winner, top of Serie A, capable of going toe-to-toe with Real Madrid and coming within a Mateo Retegui miss-of-the-season contender of stopping them in their tracks.
Atalanta are fearless: they flip the switch, their man-to-man press ignites, and it’s often lights out for the opponent. That they’ve also managed to tighten up defensively — rather than serving up the feast-or-famine fare of yesteryear — shows how this team has grown.
Oh and this isn’t some tactical savant who dreams up a scheme and acquires players that fit what he wants to do. No, Gasperini takes a grab bag of waifs and strays — Lookman (unwanted by RB Leipzig), De Ketelaere (unwanted by AC Milan), Raoul Bellanova (unwanted by Internazionale), Isak Hien (a no-name from Hellas Verona), Lazar Samardzic (a languid soloist) — and gets them to fit into his system and run themselves into the ground in the process.
That’s great coaching folks; any way you slice it. And that’s why they’re so good. And so unlike any other team in Europe.
Mbappé’s injury shouldn’t overshadow his performance
Mbappé is injured again and, while Ancelotti said his exit after 35 minutes was mostly precautionary, we’ll get a better sense after his tests on Wednesday. But in half hour or so he was on the pitch, the France star scored a goal and could have added another two. Just as importantly, he was a willing runner, showing for the ball time and again, rather than waiting out on the wing, as he sometimes did at Paris Saint-Germain.
Some will cruelly say it’s the return from injury of Vinícius that spurred Mbappé into action. I choose to believe it’s simply a desire to make himself useful. He’s not a fool, he knows just how unbalance and irrational Real Madrid’s set-up is when he and Vinícius are on the pitch together. So he tries to make up for it with work-rate (sure Mbappé-standard off-the-ball work-rate, but still.). For 35 minutes, he was doing just what was expected of him.
The story will be all about how long he’s out and how Madrid will cope without him, but we shouldn’t overlook just how good he was when he was out there.
Éderson is among the best in the world at his role
No, not the Manchester City keeper (he may be as well, though Pep doesn’t seem to think so of late). I’m talking about the Atalanta midfielder. He didn’t just monster Federico Valverde and Ceballos for much of the game, he popped up everywhere and did his Superman act, defeating players in every area of the pitch.
Whether it was beating Vinícius in a foot-race, nutmegging Mbappé, playing a one-two with Lookman in the box, making more recovery runs than your local ambulance … he looked the way he has looked for much of the past 12 months: like the prototypical high-energy midfield all-rounder.
Are there any midfielders out there that can offer better quality and quantity for 90 minutes plus each and every week? Maybe. I just can’t think of any right now.