Real Madrid continued with his positive streak and got a comfortable victory (2-0) against Espanyol, one of the worst teams in La Liga. With some absences, Los Blancos got the three points without shining but without suffering and they kept putting pressure on Barcelona, only 10 days before a decisive El Clásico.
When Real Madrid host a team in the bottom three of the table, the normal situation would be a comfortable victory. And this is what Real Madrid fans got at Bernabéu. However, the team didn’t shine as much as they did in the past days and Los Blancos missed Eden Hazard, whose injury would be a major blow for Zidane’s men.
The manager decided to include Vinicius Junior in the starting eleven, and actually the Brazilian winger was one of the best players in the pitch. In the sunny afternoon, Vinicius played better than Rodrygo Goes, who also started this time. Zidane didn’t want to introduce many changes in the team, with Mendy in the left back because Marcelo was injured.
And Los Blancos had problems to create danger. We had to wait until the 38th minute to see the first goal. It was Varane who unblocked the game after an assist from Karim Benzema. Before, we didn’t see many interesting actions during the game.
The result was very uncertain until the end, because we had to wait until the 82nd minute to see the second goal. Again was Karim Benzema, who scored his 11 goal in La Liga and he showed again that he is able to fight this year to be the topscorer of the competition. The only bad news arrived with the red card shown to Mendy, who cannot play in Valencia. For that tough game Zidane doesn’t have any left back available, a problem for the manager.
