Benzema is alone

When Benzema doesn't shoot, the car stalls. Against Betis, for the first time in the last nine league games that the French striker has played as a starter, he was left unmarked. No teammate made up for Karim's missing goals. In Getafe, where he was a substitute, Madrid also fell to zero. Madrid have been unable to score in seven of the 19 games played by him 9 in which he did not display his aim. “We have lacked something offensively. We were not fine,” he said. Zidane after the draw against Betis. It is the diagnosis of one of Madrid's problems this season: the goal. Of the last 11 games, Madrid have only been able to score in the first leg against Liverpool when they have not had the contribution of the French.

The problem is that the goal has a good main actor, but it lacks secondary ones. Benzema has 27 goals this season, the same as in the entire previous campaign and three less than two years ago. He is approaching his highest scoring season as a Real Madrid player: the 32 goals he scored in 2011-12. Then he played 52 games; this, at most, will play 47. Behind the French, five footballers have to be brought together to match and slightly exceed the forward's individual numbers. Casemiro, Asensio and Vinicius have six each (less than a third of Karim) and Modric and Ramos, four. Among the five, 28 goals.

Except for a scoring outburst from them or from those who come from behind (Kroos, Hazard and Valverde have three goals each), Benzema will be the only player to finish the season with a dozen goals scored. No Madrid goal scorer lived such loneliness for 50 years, when in the 1970-71 Pirri scored 16 goals and Fleitas and Bueno had eight each. That season, Madrid played 42 games: 30 in the League, two in the Cup (Dépor, then in the Second Division, eliminated the first for change) and ten in the defunct Recopa, with a tiebreaker included in the final against Chelsea . This season the team will close its service record with 52 or 53 games.

Last season the only white footballer, apart from Benzema, who reached ten goals was Sergio Ramos, with 13 goals. A contrast to what happened in 2016-2017, the double season and unit B, when seven players reached ten: Cristiano (42), Morata (20), Benzema (19), James and Isco (11 each) and Ramos and Asensio (10). In total there were 173 goals, the second highest number in Madrid history.

Less than 100 goals, less than two per game

We are facing the least scoring season of the white team in this 21st century. Madrid have scored 76 goals in 45 matches played in all competitions, averaging 1.69 goals per match. It was not so low since 1999-00, when the Eighth squad scored 106 goals in 65 games, 1.63 per game. The average always remained above two (and with more than 100 goals) between 2007-08 and 2017-18, but after the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo the whites have not reached that scoring rate again. In 2018-19 the average was 1.89 and last season it rose slightly to 1.94.

Unless I get several bulky hits (the white team has not scored more than four goals in the same game for 82 games, in the 6-0 at Galatasaray on November 6, 2019, with a hat-trick de Rodrygo), Madrid will close its third consecutive season without reaching 100 goals.