Real Madrid: Mateo Kovacic shows his worth again in win over Leganés
By Ben Sundock
Mateo Kovacic stole the show Saturday in the Santiago Bernabéu as Real Madrid defeated Leganés 2-1. The Croatian started in a heavily rotated squad put out by manager Zinedine Zidane. Let’s take a look at how Kova performed in this match.
The 23-year-old holding midfielder looked like his countrymen Luka Modric in La Liga match 34 for Los Blancos. Mateo, who has slowly but surely started to receive more and more playing time, showed his coach and the Madridistas why he is set to take over as a regular starter in Madrid in the near future.
Playing alongside Dani Ceballos and Marcos Llorente in the midfield, Kova was the guy who ran the show. His incredible passing vision and dribbling opened up tons of space for Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema up front.
In his 61 minutes of work, Mateo missed just two of his 64 passes, completed three dribbles, had one tackle, and totaled 72 touches (third most on the team).
While he didn’t contribute an assist or goal in this match, Mateo Kovacic again proved to all the critics why he deserves to be a regular on this team. Clearly, after the way he played today and has played in the last couple months, President Florentino Perez will not let the Croatian depart the Spanish capital any time soon.
Today marked Kovacic’s ninth start of the league campaign this year, beating out his total number of starts in the 2015/2016 season, but, 10 fewer than last season.
I think it is rather clear that after today’s performance and an impressive cameo in the first-leg against Bayern Munich last Wednesday, the younger looking Luka Modric will feature heavily in the final four La Liga matches this season.
We saw Mateo get the start in the first edition of El Clasico back in December, as he was tasked with man-marking Lionel Messi for nearly the entire match. While he did a very good job silencing the prolific Argentine forward, Los Blancos fell to their rivals 3-0.
Saturday, the midfielder won over the heart of BeIN Sports color commentator, Ray Hudson, who hailed the Real Madrid player from the first whistle to the moment he was substituted off.
Next: Real Madrid 2 – 1 Leganés: Quick match recap
As the year has gone on, I have been more and more impressed with Mateo Kovacic’s ability to dribble around challenges and pass the ball like Toni Kroos does. The way he transitions from playing defense to building up the offensive-attack is world-class.
We as fans should expect to see a lot more of this man not only with Real Madrid, but in the Croatia lineup this summer at the World Cup.