Real Madrid 2-1 Leganes : A professional well oiled machine
- Arpan Bhattacharjee
- Apr 29, 2018
- 2 min read
It's all kicking off at the full-time whistle!
As the referee blew his final whistle Gabriel, Leganes Captain, gets himself sent off at the Santiago Bernabeu.
Real Madrid rested Cristiano Ronaldo and Sergio Ramos for their La Liga game at home to Leganes.
France defender Raphael Varane was also left out of the squad as Zidane looked to keep his side fresh for Tuesday's return against Bayern Munich.
Zidane has made a habit of leaving top scorer Ronaldo, 33, out of the squad for away games in the last two months to keep him in ideal shape for Champions League games.
Despite not quite being at their best, a largely second-string Madrid side have come away with three vitally important points, moving them to within one of second-place Atletico. Zidane was also crucially able to rest most of his key players ahead of Tuesday's Champions League semi-final second leg against Bayern Munich.
Leganes are understandably upset that they weren't allowed to embark on one last attacking move, as they certainly were the better of the two sides during the second half. Madrid impressed before the break but were slightly sloppy afterwards, leaving them in real danger of conceding late on. Luckily for them, they were just about able to hold on.
Zidane rolled out a traditional 4-4-2, with Borja Mayoral and Karim Benzema up top, Marcos Llorente and Mateo Kovacic in the middle, and Dani Ceballos and Gareth Bale on the flanks. Pacy young full-backs in Achraf and Theo slid in behind them, while Casemiro and Jesus Vallejo acted as the central defenders in front of Kiko Casilla. Kovacic, meanwhile, completed his first 50 passes, and remained a key distributor throughout.
Right flank things: Bale and Ceballos were interchangeable at times, but mostly stuck to their flanks. On the right, Bale had an effect from deep, where he tracked to retain the ball and disposses players, while joining the attack often.
Behind Bale was Achraf, who had some good dynamism offensively. He also caught up to passes (and in one instance, his own poor / heavy touch) with sheer pace. His biggest question mark will come at the goal conceded, where he completely fell asleep in bizarre fashion.
You could argue Vallejo and Casemiro shouldn’t have let it through, but Achraf had all the time in the world to track Brasanac here — he had both positioning and time. He just, um, switched off.
The second half was crazy underwhelming, to be sure. Leganes were just better, and Real Madrid’s lack of hunger was disappointing. On to Bayern now.
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