Madrid runs out of gunpowder

He Real Madrid he came back to click on LaLiga, in his run over visit to El Sadar, with a draw against Osasuna (0-0) that showed that the white evils they concentrate on midfield onwards. With Ramos at cruising speed, Varane healing his mental wounds after Manchester and recovered the medical absences in the rear, the defensive plot already resembles that of the post-confinement, with that certainty that was the basis of the league title. Only three goals conceded in the last nine games attest to this. The problem appears when it comes to damaging the rival.

Against Osasuna, Madrid was a want and I cannot in attack: eight shots in total, only one between sticks (The work of Asensio, the sharpest of the white strikers) and two goals scored and later well annulled, both for offside by Benzema. The Frenchman, in a new outbreak of drought (he has three games without marking), was disconnected of the white game and surpassed by the rigorous red rear, impeccable to disable him with a simple step forward.

It is the third game of 18 in the league in which Madrid have gone without scoring; the quarter of 24 if the Champions League is also counted. And it is becoming too common a trend for a team that, between the end of the 2015-16 season and the start of the 2017-18 season (the 2016-17 was complete in between), accumulated 73 matches in a row scoring. Zidane was on the bench and several of the current members of the squad also experienced it, but they were other times, when Cristiano inflated the Madrid statistics with his unstoppable voracity.

A Madrid with Cristiano, another without him

They have gone eight games with a final 0-0 and 15 without scoring in the 86 games of Zidane's second stage at the helm of Real Madrid (The 17%); In the first stage, with almost twice as many games (149), there were only three 0-0 and 9 games without seeing a goal (just 6%). The result of the downturn, directly related to the departure of a Cristiano who averaged 50 goals per season in Madrid (450 goals in nine years), is that Madrid has barely scored 30 goals in the 18 league games it has played so far (1.7 per game on average). Since 2007, is he second worst data White after 18 days, only surpassed by the 26 goals of 2018-19; precisely, the first season after the sale of Cristiano to Juventus …

In 2017 (the calendar year) on Madrid scored 156 goals; in 2018 there were 142 (Cristiano participated until June); in 2019, 100 dives; and in 2020 that has just left, 91, the worst figure since 2005. Production has fallen by more than 40% in three years and in the short term, Madrid longs for what Ancelotti said about Cristiano at the time: “When he plays, it is as if let's start 1-0. It sounds like a joke, but it is reality. “Carletto knew what he was talking about, since Madrid scored 1,385 goals in 503 games with Cristiano in the squad, 2.7 per game on average; and since he left, there have been 241 goals. in 136 games, 1.8 on average. Almost one goal less (0.9), the one that Ancelotti said and that Madrid is still looking for. doors of a new title: the Super Cup.

The goal decreases at Real Madrid, in which the media do everything they can and the forwards need to improve, and a lot: 15 of those 30 goals have been the work of attackers (eight from Benzema, two from Lucas and Vinicius and one from Asensio, Mariano and Hazard), 10 from midfielders (three from Modric, Valverde and Casemiro and one from Kroos), two of defenses (both from Ramos) and the remaining three, in their own goal. Benzema's eight goals after 18 days they know little about a candidate for the title who has a hard time to hit the opponent.