Overtaken in all areas of the game by PSG, Real Madrid completely missed out on this round of 16 first leg of the Champions League.
The BBC has been gone, even for a while, but Real Madrid are still feared for their attack. Except that this time, the Casa Blanca was suffocated by the power of the Parisian collective. Superior in all areas of the game, the French club left their opponent no chance, even ending up triumphing over a last feat from Kylian Mbappé.
Symbol of this collective disillusion for Real Madrid, his line of attack reduced to silence. Between Benzema, Asensio and Vinicius, there was not one to catch up with the other. Real Madrid have only shot three times in 90 minutes for none on target. A starving statistic for a team of such caliber, especially compared to the 21 Parisian attempts, including 8 on target.
Real dominated in all sectors
“Paris deserved to win, because they played better than us” simply decided Carlo Ancelotti. Still, the Spanish left-handed winger only got a 4.5 from our editorial staff. The least worst score because Vinicius, so feared for his dribbling, his speed and his precision in front of goal, and Benzema collected a 4. Coming back from injury, the Frenchman was never in the game, the fault especially of a lack of ammunition for his trainer.
“The problem was not his physical appearance, but rather that we didn’t get the balls to him well enough.” In the midfield, the Modric-Casemiro-Kroos engine did not hold the shock, dominated by the pressing and the intensity of the Ile-de-France. Verratti and Paredes had plenty of time to find solutions and combine in the short game most of the time, as evidenced by the Ile-de-France residents’ almost 60% possession of the ball, while the placement of Danilo Pereira as the third central defender in phase offensive freed up the sides.
The 17 crosses to 5 and the 7 corners to only one for Real Madrid are also there to attest to this. Ferland Mendy also admitted that the problem of his team was above all collective. “I think we weren’t very good in the first. In the second, we managed to discover each other a little and to find each other a little more. They had a lot of action and we managed to hold on until the end, but we conceded a goal in stoppage time and it’s very annoying. The tone is set for the return.
