Madrid's defense melts towards the hot spot of the season

No Real Madrid footballer appeared on Sunday to give his version of the defeat in the Super Cup final against Barcelona.

They left the King Fahd stadium in Riyadh silent and beaten.

"Very hurt," summed up Ancelotti, who has been ruminating since before the World Cup on his concern about the momentum of the team, particularly about how he defends.

Qatar's break did not alter a smooth trend of months ago: they are increasingly dangerous.

Arriving in Arabia, he was still uneasy.

They were not in good "condition," he said.

And this Monday morning he faced the 5,000 kilometers back home after seeing that his greatest rival had underlined the collapse, and with a stressful calendar in sight.

On Thursday, in the round of 16, they repeat their visit to Villarreal, who undressed them in the League before the trip to Riyadh.

Then they receive Athletic, perhaps they will have a Cup quarterfinal during the week, a Real Sociedad launched and four days later, Valencia, who took them to penalties in the semifinal in Arabia.

And so almost without being able to catch air until the trip to Anfield on February 21 for the round of 16 of the Champions League.

Ancelotti says that they are not in a good moment, but he also assured that "Madrid is back".

Last season, the team also started with cracks in defense and they corrected it when they approached the hot section of the course.

This time the Italian is not being able to straighten the course.

He glimpsed green shoots in the semifinal against Valencia — "The block has been more compact" — but Barça burst their seams.

Although Ancelotti repeated that his team was better this December than the previous season, Madrid drew divergent trajectories in both cases.

They arrived at last year's Super Cup in full improvement of their defensive mechanisms, reducing the danger they generated.

It looks good in the evolution of the expected goals against, that is, the quality of the chances available to the opponents.

It's going down.

To observe it, it is useful to take the moving average of the last ten games.

Instead of looking at the data for each match, for each one the average of the last ten is taken, so that the fluctuations of specific matches are smoothed out and trends are better observed.

According to Statsbomb data, during the six games in the month leading up to the 2022 Super Cup, Madrid gradually reduced expected goals against from 1.13 per game to 0.85.

This course, with the World Cup in between, the comparison is not clean, but if the same number of days is considered, Madrid went from allowing 0.81 expected goals to 0.91 per game.

The success of the last Super Cup, when they defeated Barça in the semifinal, did not alter the trend of improvement in the defense.

Until mid-March, Madrid continued to fine-tune and allowing fewer and fewer chances, until bringing that moving average to 0.74.

Later, with a great advantage already in the League and the Champions League qualifiers, he raised his foot and finished the course in 1.51.

After Sunday's crash, Ancelotti wanted to be optimistic about the impact a game that left them speechless could have.

He said that he believed that the team was going to recover, and that he was going to do it with commitment.

He insisted that they should adjust the defense and that they would work it out.

The Super Cup leaves even more open the question with which the team arrived in Riyadh, if it would be able to regain some control through order.

Against Barcelona he was once again very vulnerable, just before a grueling calendar to which this time the Club World Cup is added at the beginning of February.

And everything, with three important pieces of that gear out of action: Lucas will be out for a month and a half, and Alaba and Tchouameni still have two weeks left.

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