Today was the first official match for Real Madrid in the 2020-2021 season. LaLiga actually began last week but since Real Madrid had a Champions League match against Manchester City in August they began a week later. Barcelona will play their first match next week because they had 2 Champions League matches in August.
Zidane chose a weird midfield for this match, he played with Modric, Kross, and Odegaard who has just returned to Madrid after spending some years gaining experiences in smaller teams. Coincidentally, Odegaard played with Real Sociedad last season. This midfield was weird because Casemiro is the only defensive midfielder in the team and he wasn't included.
What Zidane was looking for with the Modric, Kross, and Odegaard was probably to bypass Real Sociedad high pressing that could have overwhelmed Casemiro. In the match against Manchester City in August this is how Real Madrid lost, by being unable to surpass City's high pressing, which ended up causing horrible mistakes in Madrid's defensive players.
The attacking players for Madrid were Vinicius, Benzema and Rodrygo. I was excited to watch the 2 Brazilians playing together with Benzema but sadly the final result was a disappointment. Benzema had a few opportunities to score but he missed them all, and his best shots were from outside the box and these were very weak shots, Real Sociedad's goalkeeper had no issues blocking these shots.
Rodrygo felt a bit shy, he appeared to be scared of losing the ball and I don't remember him taking risky decisions. He certainly needs more work and improve a lot if he wants a succesful career in Real Madrid.
Vinicius, on the other hand, had more impact in the game compared to Rodrygo. He made some good driblings and felt very energetic. The only thing missing in his match was a goal or at least an assist. The biggest disappointment in Real Madrid's attack was Benzema though. I thought this striker was going to have a great game after scoring 4 goals against Getafe in a recent friendly match but that wasn't the case. His movements on the pitch interfered with Odegaard's natural position, and he wasn't able to create good combinations with Rodrygo or Vinicius.
I understand that in the first match players might have their aim a bit off but Real Madrid is supposed to be one of the best teams in the world and right now their attacking players don't seem to be very dangerous, so much so that the most dangerous shot in the match came from Real Sociedad.
Hazard and Asensio didn't play because they are injured but hopefully they will be able to play soon. Real Madrid's defense and goalkeeper were good, just like last season. The problem with this team is the same as last season and the season before that one, they have serious issues scoring goals and this won't be solved until the team hires a new top striker.
In comparison, Barcelona's issues are the opposite, they have a weak defense and a weak midfield but they can easily score goals mainly thanks to Messi. Last season Real Madrid won the league thanks to its defense despite the fact Barcelona scored many more goals. This season I think these 2 teams will have a fierce competition between each other but neither of them are good enough to compete in the Champions League.
Real Madrid feels like an incomplete team right now, they need another defensive midfielder besides Casemiro, and they need either to hire a new top striker, or begin to give more minutes to Jovic and see if he is able to achieve a good performance. However, thanks to the financial problems caused by the pandemic they will probably not hire anyone until summer of 2021.
This was just the first match and it was against a difficult team but it is always worrisome when the team not only is unable to score a single goal, but what's even worse they didn't even deserved to score one.
Zidane had Jovic (a 60 million striker) on the bench for the entire match and when making changes he preferred to include unknown low lever players like Marvin or Arribas. I think that adding a good striker when you are looking for goals is like a basic decisions for coaches. Zidane has been a very successful coach in his time with Real Madrid but it is clear he sometimes makes weird decisions and changes.
Time will tell if this Madrid can compete with the current Barcelona which is also facing their own issues as a team as mentioned before. After seeing this disappointing match, and knowing about Barcelona's weaknesses, I think Madrid can very well compete but it will be very close because both teams are crap right now.