After winning the UEFA Champions League and La Liga double last season and signing the world’s best player in the summer, 2024/25 was supposed to be pretty straightforward for Real Madrid.
This has not been the case so far.
The whites have struggled for form in the face of the international break in September, and are already four precarious points behind Barcelona, who are setting the pace. The League race for the title.
Here’s everything we’ve learned from Madrid’s start to the 2024/25 campaign.
If you’ve been to Spain on holiday in the past few weeks, you’ve probably passed a newsstand full of newspapers emblazoned with Kylian Mbappe’s face.
Thanks to the sports newspapers in Spain (AS, Sport, Mundo Deportivo), all facets of Mbappé’s life as a Real Madrid The player has been scrutinized by the press, especially after he failed to score in his first league games.
It’s a pressure that no other player in world football has to deal with at the moment…
…But this is a pressure Mbappé is clearly able to cope.
After a few league games without a goal, the French superstar made his mark in the clash with Real Betis at the Santiago Bernabéu.
The striker’s two goals – which they won 2-0 – were the perfect example of what he can bring to Madrid this season.
While there has been talk of how Real Madrid’s new attacking formation led by Mbappé will perform heading into the 2024/25 season, the real tactical problem facing Carlo Ancelotti is in midfield.
This is largely due to Toni Kroos absence
The midfielder retired at the end of the 2023/24 season, and has left Madrid without a metronomic presence in the middle of the park.
While Aurelien Tchouameni, Federico Valverde and Eduardo Camavinga are fantastic players in their own right, none have the skills that Kroos had and none have been able to dictate the pace of Madrid’s early season games in the way he would have he
It’s a big problem, and one that doesn’t have an obvious solution.
Having been one of the breakout stars of Euro 2024, Real Madrid fans were hoping to see plenty of Arda Guler at the start of the 2024/25 season.
So far, that hasn’t been the case.
The youngster has been limited to just 97 minutes and one start in La Liga, with Dani Ceballos even being trusted to replace the injured Jude Bellingham.
It’s a rather perplexing situation given Guler’s ceiling and performances at the end of the 2023/24 season – he scored five goals in five appearances – and one that Madrid fans will be hoping is resolved before the star of Turkey requests a move to another location.
