Rayo Vallecano 0-1 Real Madrid: Player Ratings as Thibaut Courtois spares humiliation

LW Vinicius Jr.

Vinicius Jr. looks gassed. Real Madrid need to get serious about resting the young winger, as the wear of the season and all the fouls is starting to take its toll on the player. He was not electrifying as usual, and yet he still had one of the defining plays of the game, unselfishly sliding the ball across for Karim Benzema, who scored the game-winning goal for Los Blancos in the final 10 minutes of the match.

Rating: 6.0

CF Karim Benzema

To be honest, Karim Benzema did just about nothing for the entire match before his brilliant pass to spring Vinicius Jr. and then his finish of an open net. He fully deserves credit for the clutch game-winner and his 19th goal of the season, but this is another one of those performances where we have to use his own rubric and say that we cannot praise him too much just for scoring the goal. In truth, he has not seemed 100 percent fit over the last several weeks. The fatigue is clearly starting to weigh on the players.

Rating: 6.0

RW Marco Asensio

During the first half of the match, Marco Asensio was the liveliest man on the pitch for Real, which is actually a departure from previous games where he starts slow and then lights it up in the second half, usually with a banger out of nowhere.

Unfortunately, there was no goal out of nowhere for Asensio at the Vallecas. The right winger missed three good chances in the first half and was quite poor in the second before being taken off for Rodrygo Goes. It was disappointing to see how Asensio could not build on a positive first-half performance.

Rating: 5.0