Tuesday’s 3-2 win over Atalanta showed that Carlo Ancelotti is starting to find a balance between Real Madrid’s star quality and grit.
— After the 3-0 win over Girona on Saturday, Real Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti announced: “We’re back.”
Yeah, they’re not. At least not in terms of being a proper team, greater than the sum of its parts. And the fact that they lost another part — Kylian Mbappé — 35 minutes into Tuesday’s 3-2 win over Atalanta in the Champions League won’t help, even though they reclaimed another part in Vinícius Júnior.
The caveat is that they were playing Atalanta and, as Pep Guardiola famously said, playing La Dea “is as much fun as a trip to the dentist.” The good news is that Madrid won’t be facing Gian Piero Gasperini’s team — or anyone who plays like them — again for a long time. The bad news is there are still ways that Ancelotti’s team can, and must, improve.
Tuesday night highlighted many of Real Madrid’s flaws. Dani Ceballos showed (again) he is not a viable playmaker when there are guys in his grill. Lucas Vázquez is not someone you want to do much one-on-one defending (especially not against Ademola Lookman). And when Vinícius, Mbappé and Jude Bellingham are on the pitch, they can’t help but drift to the left. When — as Mbappé occasionally did — do try to keep their positions and spacing, they don’t look natural, like kids trying to impress the teacher.
That said, the win in Bergamo also emphasized two of the things that make Real Madrid so good: star power and grit. You just look at the scorers’ names on your favorite app — Mbappé, Vinícius, Bellingham — and you have evidence of that. Mbappé’s control and finish for the opener was next level. Vinícius impressed not so much with his goal — the result of a lucky bounce — but with the absurd pass for Bellingham that made it 3-1.
