Casemiro is another

It was the 60th minute of the match between Rayo and Real Madrid, when Casemiro, trying to control the ball, lost control of it and committed a hard tackle on Óscar Valentín. The match official, Isidro Díaz de Mera, admonished him with a yellow card. The ninth of the Brazilian course. Seconds later, Carlo Ancelotti took over from the Madrid pivot and brought in Fede Valverde, called to take over from him on March 9 in the second leg against PSG. The dour face of the Brazilian midfielder on his way to the bench denoted that he had not ended up satisfied with his performance. The Italian coach wanted to prevent greater evils…

It is not being a regular season for the Brazilian. Quite the contrary. Before the Vallecano team, Until his substitution, Casemiro had lost 14 balls (12 of them in the first half). He surpassed him Modric, with 15, although the Croatian played 88 minutes (28 more than the Brazilian). This data is a symptom of the state of the Brazilian: Last season, Casemiro lost 409 balls in the 34 games he played in the league championship (an average of 12.03 balls lost per game), something that corrected when recovering 226 (an average of 6.65 recoveries per game). This campaign, and in the 24 games he has played so far (he has only missed three games: he was a substitute against Mallorca, he missed the duel against Athletic due to an accumulation of warnings and gastroenteritis kept him from playing against Granada a a couple of weeks), accumulates 274 losses, similar to last season’s figure (this year it adds 173 recoveriesin this section it improves its performance compared to last year: an average of 7.52 recoveries per game).

Another facet in which it stands out in a negative sense is in the number of fouls committed by Casemiro: last season he received 55 offenses (an average of 1.62 per game; interestingly, he won the same fouls for Madrid, 55). In this one, he has already been signaled 40 (an average of 1.74 per game), while he has won 30 (an average of 1.30 per game). Interestingly, in six games he has not been called a foul (four of them played at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium), and in another six games, only one.

Another aspect to highlight is that after day 26, Case He has not yet made his debut as a scorer this campaign. Against Rayo, he opened the scoring to later see how the referee annulled the goal by noting up to three possible infractions in his action: from offside (this was shown on television), to a possible foul on a rival, passing through possible hands. Last season, at this point in the competition, he already had five of the six goals he scored in the league championship (he finished with seven, after scoring on the second day of the Champions League against Borussia Mönchengladbach). This data comes from his lower shot on goal compared to last year. Last season, Casemiro finished off 61 times, 36 outside and 25 between the three sticksthat is, he shot an average of 1.06 balls outside the goal, and 0.74 every time he saw the door. This year, that number has dropped: he has finished off only 33 times, 19 being off goal and 14 between the three sticks, which gives an amount of 0.83 shots outside and 0.61 shots that have gone between the three suits, according to data from Opta. What he does equal is his record of assists (four) in the league championship, the same ones he achieved last League.

Even so, his absence in the meeting on March 9 will be noticed in the center of the field. PSG will surely field a physical midfield with the presence of Danilo, Gueye (absent from the first leg as he had just returned from being with his country), Verratti and Wijnaldum. Modric, Kroos and Valverde will have to face them. Being Casemiro would be a more balanced duel in that aspect… Casemiro himself already admitted the difficulty last December, in the run-up to the match against Inter: “It may not seem like it, but I’m human. I’m not a robot. When you talk about Real Madrid, you talk about the greatest demand in the world, whether you are 18 or 35 years old. That is why we are the best club in the world.”