For weeks, Real Madrid lamented “the cycle”. You know, the one where Marco Asensio plays poorly but then scores out of nowhere, earns another start, ghosts, gets benched, scores off the bench, and then repeats this in perpetuity while the entire right side of the Madrid formation goes up in flames.
I wrote this before the 2021/22 season even started. Asensio isn’t a winger. He is a great shooter. Sometimes, he can put in a great cross or flick to create a chance. I would never dispute his technical ability. But when you watch how slow he is in transition, how awful he is at helping the right back defensively, and how much he disappears from games, you cannot tell me that this is the kind of player with the skill-set fitting of a starting winger at Real Madrid. Of all clubs.
Thankfully, it seems as though Carlo Ancelotti has finally realized the error of his ways when it comes to his misplaced trust in Asensio. Even if Carlo suddenly decides to unwisely start Asensio in a big match this weekend against Sevilla, I am confident in saying that Ancelotti has knocked Asensio down a spot in importance.
What makes me so confident? Remember how poorly Asensio played in both legs against PSG? You would think that after his disastrous display in the first leg, Carletto would not have Asensio anywhere near his XI in the second. But he did. And Asensio was somehow even worse, earning a 0 out of 10 in a rating I hope to never, ever give to a Real Madrid player.
Marco Asensio did not play a single minute against Chelsea
It was obvious that Asensio could not start against Chelsea. And he did not start. In either leg. Better yet, he did not come off the bench. In 210 possible minutes, Asensio did not play a single one of them against Chelsea for Real Madrid. Fede Valverde and Rodrygo Goes were the options on the right wing, and they were brilliant. Rodrygo scored a tie-saving goal in the second leg, while Fede was indispensable in the overall winning effort against an intense Chelsea side.
The charade with Asensio is over. All of his fugazi goals do not matter, because his lack of everything else that makes someone a competent footballer has finally caught up with him. The young men, Fede and Rodrygo, have pulled ahead, doing so with the fighting spirit and effort that Asensio has failed to bring to the table for years – not just in the 2021/22 season.
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Ancelotti did well to get 11 goal contributions out of Asensio this season, but, at a certain point, you cannot put a few longshots over structural weaknesses and the presence of a creative black hole on an entire flank. Carlo hasn’t been getting everything right, but not trusting Asensio anymore is perhaps his biggest step in the right direction.