CB Sergio Ramos
It’s always wonderful for Madridistas to see the captain back in the starting lineup. Real Madrid benefited greatly from his presence at mid-week in the 2-0 win over Borussia Monchengladbach, with Sergio Ramos unlucky to score with his head due to Yann Sommer’s brilliant save.
Ramos wasn’t quite as influential to the attack, but his defending was spot-on. He had a couple of slip-ups, but he always recovered. Active as ever, Ramos took Luis Suarez out of the match and had three tackles and three interceptions as Real’s top defender.
Elite as ever with his ball-playing, which has only gotten better over the years, Ramos completed 94 percent of his passes including five of seven long balls.
DM Casemiro
The official Man of the Match, Casemiro scored the early opener with his head after literally letting his marker slip around the six-yard box. Casemiro is a goal-scoring asset in the box, and he showed that with his well-taken set piece goal.
Defensively, Casemiro looked like the “old Case”, recovering from his early-season struggles. We just might be seeing one of La Liga’s best players in 2019-2020 back at his best, and that is massive for Real Madrid. As we saw on Saturday night, Case helps Real so much defensively.
A criticism of Casemiro is his ball-playing ability, as he’s made some horrible mistakes this season, just as he has in past years. While he had one sloppy mistake deep in his own half vs. Atleti this weekend, Casemiro completed nearly 90 percent of his passes and generally looked assured in possession. Mistakes will happen, but they were few and far between on Matchday 13 for the goal-scoring hero.