Real Madrid: Ups, Downs And Observations From The Draw Against Villarreal

The Observations

What this game meant for Luka Jovic’s Situation

Mariano Diaz scored in his first few minutes of involvement on the pitch, something that he has done every season now. He gets a chance, he scores, and then he (almost) never plays again until months later. The same happened here.

This was good for Mariano as he knows that he will be spearheading Real Madrid’s attack for the next couple of games. Someone that it wasn’t good for, is Luka Jovic. Luka Jovic can’t catch a break. Not even a little bit. The guy played really well during the international break, scoring a bunch of goals for Serbia, gaining some much-needed confidence, hoping that he’d finally get a few matches under his belt now that Karim Benzema is out injured.

Then he tests positive for COVID-19.

You can’t really help but feel for this man, because not only he lost his chance to convince Zidane into playing him a few more times even beyond Karim’s recovery, his direct competitor for minutes also scored in the first couple of minutes of the match’s inception. A match that he was supposed to start in? That’s really unfortunate.

Let’s be patient with Martin Odegaard

I know how, hmm, ‘spontaneous‘, Real Madrid fans are sometimes. That’s why I need to talk about this for a little bit. Whoever’s reading this, if you think Real Madrid made a mistake by bringing Martin Odegaard back into the team, terminating his loan deal, then you’re acting like said spontaneous fan.

Martin Odegaard is a lot of what this team needs: both in the present and future. It may be a little while before we start seeing the kind of performances that we saw at Sociedad, but it will happen. He’s getting used to different players, different levels in quality (absolutely no offence to Real Sociedad, they’re a great team and have been surpassing expectations, but you get my point), completely different systems, different roles that he might be tried in, et cetera. Point is, patience will pay dividends. Odegaard’s just starting off, and like I said in my piece about him a few weeks ago, he’s the perfect candidate to take over from Luka Modric.

Just give him some time to settle in. It’s okay for him to have a few mediocre games. They’ll be gone soon. Pretty soon. This wasn’t really a bad game from the Norwegian. The first half was good, and the second wasn’t because of fatigue. That’s about it. He’ll have a bucket-load of great performances this season, and consistently as well. He just needs some time to improve physically and gel with the squad as much as he and Zidane would like. I’m not saying fans are already writing them out. I’m just saying some of them have a tendency to do so, and this segment of the article is a slight attempt at preventing that from happening!

It was a weird game under weird circumstances. Real Madrid face Inter next, in a crucial Champions League tie that can set the tone for the team’s quest for a deep run in the competition, and even more so at this moment with so many injuries in the squad. It will truly test the ceiling of the players available. We’re all for it.