A Real Madrid star that deserves a lot more recognition than what he’s getting

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only Real Madrid fan that had doubts about the roster before the start of the season. Zinedine Zidane, the manager, was gone. Sergio Ramos, the captain, was gone, Raphael Varane left the club, and only David Alaba was signed on a free transfer in the summer.

Well, yes, I had my doubts on whether David Alaba would be able to play well as a centre-back, granted that he was originally a left-back to start his season off. He was very versatile, and still is, but I was wondering whether Real Madrid should’ve bought another centre-back or not. Fair to say those doubts were put to rest by Alaba’s performance in every single game.

I never had doubts on one man, though. I knew Eder Militao was going to be good. In fact, I’ve been saying it since before I started writing. I knew he was going to become a starter at some point, and I love to see his place in the starting line-up week in, week out.

Eder Militao deserves to be named among the world’s best centre-backs right now

The recognition (or lack thereof) he’s getting makes me think of the start of Militao’s career at Real Madrid. At the start, his good performances were overlooked, but the mistakes he made got blown out of proportion for reasons unknown. He had good individual games, but sometimes the team, in general, didn’t play that well and he was the scapegoat for some reason. I found it really odd. The thing is, though, he still gets overlooked. He still is underappreciated. He’s just not the scapegoat anymore, I guess.

Real Madrid haven’t lost in a while and most of the people are giving Vinicius Jr and Karim Benzema a lot of praise, and rightfully so; they deserve every bit of that praise. But Militao has silently been one of the most consistent players not only at Real Madrid, but in Europe, and yet, not many people are talking about it.

Of course, I’ve seen the chants at the Bernabeu for Militao, but I’m not talking about the big games. I’m not talking about just one game. This whole season, he has been sensational and it comes as a shock to me that not many people except for Real Madrid fans are talking about him.

In my opinion, Eder Militao, at the moment, is one of the very best centre-backs in the world. But, we know that centre-backs usually get overlooked and their performances go under the radar, but it is somehow even less for the Brazilian. No one’s really talking about him enough, and I really hope that it changes soon.

The weird part is, you can’t even bring only numbers into this, like it is with any centre-back. It’s about the eye test too. You can’t see when a defender is taking a gamble and following the forward. You can’t tell how many times he’s right to do so. You can’t quantify leadership. You can’t talk about positioning properly until you’ve seen the player actually do it. Militao excels in all these aspects of the game, and unfortunately, statistics have little to show for all this and so much more.

I really hope he starts getting the recognition like Ruben Dias does (or did) for Manchester City, or like how De Ligt – who is someone Real Madrid were looking at before going for Militao – got at Ajax, and how so many young centre-backs get at their clubs. We don’t talk about this man enough. He’d once again be very very important when Real Madrid take on Athletic Club, as David Alaba isn’t in the squad because of the unfortunate COVID-19 outbreak within the squad.