Real Madrid: 3 things to learn from the loss to RB Leipzig

Real Madrid lost their away fixture against RB Leipzig by a scoreline of 3-2 in favour of the German side, in the group stages of the UEFA Champions League. Though this defeat doesn’t cause a lot of damage to Madrid, who’re still on the top of the table, it put an end to the club’s unbeaten streak this season.

Los Blancos were thoroughly outplayed by a determined and energetic Leipzig team, with regular starters like Karim Benzema, Luka Modric and Fede Valverde missing the game and Dani Carvajal, and David Alaba starting the game from the bench.

There are a lot of talking points from this game, and let us look at three things we’ve learnt from this negative result.

1. Real Madrid’s set-piece defence has been way too disappointing

Marco Rose’s men had shown intent in their approach right from the word go, with relentless pressure, dynamic off-the-ball movement and crisp passing being a specialty of their gameplay in the opening few minutes. Their effort got rewarded with two goals from Josko Gvardiol and Christopher Nkunku in the 13th and 18th minute respectively, as Leipzig continued their fight for a place in the knockout stages.

There is no doubt that Leipzig deserved those two goals, but what would’ve hurt Real Madrid and Carlo Ancelotti is that both were the aftermath of some unorganized defending during set-pieces. Gvardiol scored off Thibaut Courtois’ amazing save off a header from a corner, and on both occasions, the opponent wasn’t marked well by the players.

Even Nkunku’s goal was a result of Real’s inability to clear the ball properly after a set-piece, with Leipzig coming out on top in every 50-50 duel after the corner was taken. The most disappointing thing during the second goal was the fact that the defensive structure was highly disorganized, every player was busy ball-watching, and Tchouameni alone had both Forsberg and Nkunku free and onside behind him, with the Frenchman eventually scoring the goal. The whole team was switched off during this entire sequence.

With aerial beasts like Rudiger, Militao, Tchouameni, Camavinga and Nacho present in yesterday’s team, the team’s defensive structure during set-pieces and in general should be way better than that. Ancelotti would definitely take note of this, and work on the zonal marking system that hasn’t been implemented properly by the team.