La Liga's current champion, Real Madrid, has achieved victory in their second match after having a tie against Real Sociedad a week ago. In this match, the team didn't use wingers but rather 2 strikers and an attacking midfielder. This is a formation that has been rarely used by this team in the past years but given the fact they have had problems scoring goals, it was worth a shot to use 2 strikers and in the end, the team won the match.
Apart from Benzema, the other striker was Jovic who had 0 minutes in the previous match. Benzema had a good match moving around the penalty area and trying to create combinations with his fellow teammates, this is one of the things he does best. Jovic, on the other hand, participated much less than Benzema and he didn't have that many opportunities to touch the ball and much less score a goal.
However, thanks to the presence of Jovic, Betis' defenders were constantly covering him and this allowed Benzema to have more space and facilitate the creation of productive plays. The first goal came after a great assist from Benzema. Jovic also caused the expulsion of a rival player, which allowed Real Madrid to play against 10 instead of 11 for around 30 minutes. So Jovic did his job even though his match could have been much better.
Real Madrid's defense wasn't very good today, they conceded 2 goals and the second one could have been easily avoided if only the midfielders were more careful in protecting the penalty box. Valverde and Kross were playing in each sideline and this left Casemiro alone in the midfield because Odegaard didn't provide that much help in the defense given the fact his main role is to create combinations with the strikers.
If Real Madrid is going to continue playing with an attacking midfielder and 2 strikers they will need to practice their defensive transitions a lot because right now they aren't defending good, and let's remember that last season this team had one of the better defenses in the entire continent.
The 2 young Brazilians wingers, Vinicius and Rodrygo didn't play even 1 minute. After their disappointing match against Real Sociedad Zidane must have decided to give them some rest this time.
In the end, Zidane's decisions had good results because the team scored 3 goals and was able to win but I sensed there is still a lot of fragilities and insecurities in the squad. The strikers aren't scoring goals, the midfielders aren't controlling the midfield and the defense is making mistakes that can cost them matches, even the goalkeeper made a horrible mistake in Real Betis' second goal. The victory was fair but a tie would have been a fair result as well.
The only reason why this team is one of the candidates to win the league is that Barcelona is also having its own issues, but neither of them will be able to compete in the Champions League, eventually, they will both be destroyed by a powerful enough team such as Bayern Munich, PSG, Liverpool or Manchester City. In the case of Real Madrid, they are currently in an ongoing transition and they just won 4 Champions Leagues out of 5 between 2014 and 2018, so it is not like the team is a complete disaster. It is just that the current transition, as every generation change, is very challenging.
The next match I will see is going to probably be Villarreal vs Barcelona tomorrow. This will be Barcelona's first official match this season and without Luis Suarez in the team, I am interested to see how will Koeman rearrange the attack.