Real Madrid: Three takeaways from David Alaba’s Euro 2020 performance

Defensive slip-ups

Although a solid defender with exemplary positional awareness, David Alaba still made some uncharacteristic mistakes.

For instance, in the second group-stage game against the Netherlands, Alaba found himself out of position on multiple occasions, which proved costly against a pacy Dutch attack. In the 10th minute, Alaba conceded a penalty while challenging for the ball with Denzel Dumfries, which Depay converted to take a 1-0 lead. Again, in the second goal, the whole defense was horribly out of position, which allowed for an easy counterattack that ended up as an easy tap-in for Dumfries.

Against Italy, in a nitty-gritty defensive performance by Austria, Alaba too had a strong defensive display. However, he found himself on the wrong end in the fifth minute of extra time. He first left a lot of space for Federico Chiesa and then failed to block his shot, which led to Italy’s first goal.

All-in-all Alaba had a rugged defensive outing in the whole tournament, barring a couple of unfortunate events. One may argue that lack of quality defensive partners may have led to these slip-ups, and this may well be a valid justification.

The presence of a more dependable defensive partner in Real Madrid may go some way to eliminating these errors.