Real Madrid Player Ratings from an embarrassing 2-1 loss at Espanyol

RB Lucas Vazquez

I know what many people are going to do. They’re going to scapegoat him and talk about how he cost Real the game once again. That’s not quite the case. I am not saying Vazquez had the best game of his life, but he didn’t have his worst either. We’ve all seen his worst, and this isn’t what it looks like.

He was out of position a few times, most of his crosses either lacked power or were overhit, apart from that, though, there’s not a lot of wrong that he did. People can talk about how he was at fault for the first goal, but I don’t think he was. Yes, he was a tad slow, but if you look back on it, it was also a little bit of Militao’s fault to not budget for the chance of a cut-back. Raul De Tomas timed his run perfectly and at most, I could say it was a little of Vazquez’s fault and a little more of Militao’s, and a whole lot of De Tomas’s brilliance.

Other than that, Vazquez had a bunch of last-second interventions that saved Real Madrid from conceding yet another goal, but things like this would likely go under the radar. Vazquez wasn’t very good, but he wasn’t bad either.

Rating: 5/10

CB Eder Militao

Militao had a below average game. There were mistakes committed by the Brazilian, for example the one I talked about above, or when he succumbed to the press when he was the last man defending during the first half. Apart from that, he was an aerial presence on crosses and free kicks for Real Madrid, and had Los Blancos’ best chance of the first half. But, he could’ve done a lot better as he had the time.

He needs to work on his positioning, as we saw in the second goal where he formed too big of a gap between him and Nacho, when he should’ve closed it down. Was worse than usual, which makes his rating a bit lesser than what you’d expect.

Rating: 4/10

CB Nacho Fernandez

Nacho confuses me. Ancelotti confuses me even more by selecting him in almost every single game. And then, Nacho confuses me once again. What is with him and being aggressive all the time while defending? Why can he not keep his position and not make the rest of the defense suffer because of mistakes he makes? In the second goal, there was no need for him to go towards Aleix Vidal and leave so much space behind him. Doing all this while knowing that Casemiro is not going to be there to save you is even more shocking.

What’s worse is, that he does this literally every single game, and in every other sequence. Mind you, these weren’t the only things he did wrong. He made a few very sloppy passes as well, and was just not composed on the ball as one would expect a Real Madrid centre-back to be. I don’t know how he hasn’t learned anything from his mistakes, and if anything, this emphasizes on Real’s requirement of a centre-back even more. Awful.

Rating: 3/10

LB David Alaba

Alaba probably had his worst game in a Real Madrid jersey. OK, that makes it sound a bit worse than it was, because Alaba has generally been great for Real Madrid, but this performance was still not great. He started as a left-back and provided a lot of runs forward in the halfspace during the first half, which I didn’t understand. Why was he not asked to be on the overlap when Real were basically crying for some width? And even when he was providing width in the second half, he didn’t do really well. His crosses weren’t good enough, he was sloppy in possession in the final third, and he wasn’t really providing Real with anything productive. Miguel could’ve done a better job this time around, but I don’t know what Ancelotti has against him. Had a few key passes, four, to be exact, but it just didn’t seem like a good game from Alaba, by his standards. Extra points for the chance creation, because most players failed to do even that much.

Rating: 5.5/10