Former Real Madrid Players Having Success Far from Spain

Cristiano Ronaldo said at Wembley after the defeat against Tottenham Hotspur that “all the players that left in summer made us stronger. Pepe, James, Morata… The guys are young and we feel the experience”, the Portuguese said in front of the journalist. Obviously, Cristiano was disappointed by their performance, but if we analyze the data we can say he’s completely right.

Florentino Pérez was certain about his new policy of signing young Spanish players to reinforce the squad and build a great team for the future. It had risks because some of them are not ready yet to compete at the higher level, as we are seeing these days. The players sold this summer participated in 13 games more than the ones who arrived. Besides, they scored 11 goals and gave 14 assists, whereas the signings have scored three goals and gave one assist.

Morata said recently that it was a mistake coming back to Madrid after his two years at Juventus. He’s now shining with Chelsea and some Real Madrid supporters miss their goals. Same scenario for Mariano Díaz, who is the topscorer at Olympique Lyonnais: “I spoke with him and he told me it was better to leave. If he had asked me to stay, perhaps I would have stayed”, Mariano admitted a conversation with Zinedine Zidane.

Pepe is also living a good season with Besiktas. Real Madrid made many mistakes at Wembley and Pepe is always a reliable player there. However, it’s true that Pepe didn’t want to sign a one-year-contract, so we can understand the club’s decision to make him leave. Jesús Vallejo, his replacement, has only played one game and he was sent off.

Danilo and James Rodríguez are struggling to have minutes with Manchester City and Bayern Múnich. The Brazilian was Carvajal’s replacement and he had a lot of minutes last year. Now we can see Achraf fighting in the right back, but he deserves more time as he’s very young.

We have to be patient with the new signings, but Mayoral, Ceballos, Marcos Llorente, Theo Hernández, Jesús Vallejo or Achraf are not knocking down the door yet. Let’s see if they are able to enjoy more minutes in the next games.