With Karim Benzema suffering a muscular injury 2 weeks earlier in the UCL game against Celtic, it was time for our much awaited superstars to step up, namely Eden Hazard.
Even though after scoring on as a sub in the same game against Celtic, he couldn’t make much of an impact on the weekend against Mallorca. The one who shouldered this responsibility and that too brilliantly was the young Brazilian – Rodrygo Silva de Goes.
Rodrygo Goes – Style of Play
Rodrygo like most other young Brazilians has a lot of tricks and flicks up his sleeve. Preferring to play down the flanks as sort of an inside winger, he also does an effective job as a striker thanks to his keen eye for goal and understanding of the game.
But what separates Rodrygo from other of his Brazilian colleagues of the same age is his ability to shake things up, off the ball. Brazilians as we all know focus mainly on their dribbling abilities and rely solely on that at most times to get past defenders.
Rodrygo on either hand can be seen making tons of switches and 1-2s with his teammates allowing play to flow more freely when he is on the pitch. And that added to his ability of being able to find teammates onto the end of his crosses serves a great role in the offensive transitions.
Despite being only 5’8, Rodrygo has quite the van Persie in him when it comes to heading the ball. With a really good acceleration and keeping dribbles short with 1 or 2 touches, he’s quite dependable when it comes to penetrating teams with low blocks such as Mallorca and Atletico Madrid.
Life without Benzema
After being the main goalscorer for Real Madrid over the past season and more importantly, after leading the team in so many memorable comebacks in the UCL, getting injured so early on at the start of this season was meant to be bad news for the whole squad.
But somehow, beyond all doubts, Real Madrid have not taken a dip neither in the results nor in the number of goals scored. This is solely due to the efforts of the team as a whole but more so, for the individual displays from the ones like Vinicius, Valverde and the rising superstar – Rodrygo.
Scoring 3 goals and 2 assists from just 4 games in La Liga, it’s already shaping up to be a vital season in his career. Previously effective only as a super-sub, Rodrygo Goes has not only proved his worth by playing as a right winger even though he is right-footed, but has also seemed to have won the confidence of Ancelotti as the second-choice striker, above Eden Hazard.
With the international break and Brazil playing against Ghana this week and Tunisia next week, it would be interesting to see how would Tito use Rodrygo and how much more time does he need to develop to get himself promoted from just being an insane rotation player to playing along the likes of Benzema and Vinicius every other weekend.
