LaLiga 2018/19: Sevilla 3-0 Real Madrid – 5 Takeaways from the game

On Wednesday, Real Madrid was expecting their toughest test yet of this LaLiga season as they travelled to Sevilla. Everyone knew this will be a litmus test for Los Blancos, but no one expected them to surrender meekly as they trailed by 0-3 at the end of 1st half.

Andre Silva was the destroyer in chief for Sevilla with a brace and Wissam Ben Yedder looked ominous throughout the match. Banega was also pretty impressive in the midfield for Sevilla and thus was a thoroughly pleasing performance from the home team. Here are the 5 major talking points from the match:

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#1 Madrid's defence

Ramos and Marcelo are two world-class defenders who will fit into any team but age is slowly getting to them as the two looked like a pale shadow of themselves in this match. Marcelo even walked off the field due to an injury.

In this match, Sevilla's attacking runs into the opposition half completely opened up the left flank of the Madrid defence giving Silva and Navas plenty of empty space to penetrate easily into the box. Ramos should have stayed back after that first goal but he yet again greedily ventured forward and was pretty lethargic while running back to tackle Silva.

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#2 Andre Silva’s incredible form

Andre Silva for some time now has been considered as Ronaldo’s successor in the Portugal team and this season he has been showing the whole world his goalscoring skills. He was simply terrific in this match as his searing pace blew away the Madrid defence and led to a great counter-attack goal.

A second goal-scoring opportunity came towards him as the ball deflected off Courtois’s gloves and Silva calmly registered the ball into the nets and gave his team a 2-0 lead only 20 minutes into the game.

#3 Benzema’s goalless streak

Benzema started the season in fine touch scoring two braces and looked all set to compensate for the loss of CR7. But as the season progressed, he seems to be completely missing from the pitch. In this game too, he was nowhere to be found and was rarely involved in attacking plays of his team.

He did not even bother to make a few runs into the opposition box hoping for a scoring opportunity. He looked bored on the pitch and it seemed like Lopetegui’s possession-based play has affected his natural game.

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#4 Sevilla’s packed midfield

Lopetegui’s style relies a lot on midfielders retaining the ball for lengthy periods of time and Sevilla’s 5 man midfield provided them with a lot of problems as the ball was constantly taken away from Modric and Casemiro. Banega was at the centre of their crowded midfield and he did a great job by making pressing hard to get the ball back from the skilled Madrid midfielders.

Navas was outstanding on the right flank and made optimum use of the empty spaces left behind by Ramos and Marcelo to provide Andre Silva solid goal scoring opportunities.

#5 The flaw in Lopetegui’s tactics

Real Madrid players are slowly getting used to Lopetegui’s possession play as the season is progressing but the strategic loopholes in his tactics were completely exposed by Sevilla. The first half was a great example of the flaws in his style as Real Madrid had 65% possession but all those passes without any attacking intention did not do any harm to the Sevilla defence.

Also, Casemiro is slowly starting to concentrate more on accurate passes and in the first half moved forward for better distribution which did not help Los Blancos as there was no one left except Varane to counter Silva and Yedder. Lopetegui has another tough game on Saturday night and must rectify these flaws as quickly as possible.