Four goals a game and one right flank: Real Madrid seen from behind the fence

Minute 44. Federico Valverde receives the ball on the right flank, close to the touchline, and barely needs to look. His cross cuts across the five-and-a-half-metre zone, passes through the eyeline of two centre-backs, and before the stands have fully risen the net is shaking. I watched that phase four times on a sleepless night in Busan. What made me pause the frame was not the finish, but Jude Bellingham's run behind it: he did not charge straight forward, he ran diagonally, into exactly the gap a right-back leaves when he is dragged wide.

A moment like that, watched once, is luck. Watched four times, it becomes a blueprint. After 51 years of writing about football, I have learned that blueprints do not live on the tactical board in a coach's hand. They live in the place where three players run into the same gap without a single word between them.

The mood before kick-off

Real Madrid went into the match against RB Leipzig carrying a strange streak: three consecutive games with four goals. They left with that streak intact. Nine points from nine in the Champions League league phase, one of five teams yet to drop a point. Those are verifiable facts, and they are correct.

On the other side stood a club that had just lost 1-6 in the Bundesliga. A team in that state walks out with two options: close down and absorb, or open up and hit back. Leipzig chose the second. They pressed high, pushed the midfield line up, and were willing to trade attack for attack. Against a side with Real Madrid's transition speed, that is a gift.

This match was played on 21 October. Four days later, on 25 October, comes El Clasico.

The right flank is the centre of everything

The first thing I wrote in my notebook: Real Madrid do not attack in balance. They attack on a slant.

Federico Valverde, a central midfielder by instinct, was deployed at right-back while genuine right-backs sat on the bench. This is a deliberate trade, and it deserves more serious analysis than a compliment about a player's versatility. Putting Valverde on the right means giving up a measure of positional discipline in exchange for two things: ball circulation in the final third and crossing volume.

Both appeared. The opening goal came from a right-sided cross. The second goal followed the same corridor. Bellingham drifted inside, dragged a defender with him, and space opened at the edge of the box. Kylian Mbappé was directly involved in two of the four goals. This is a system with visible structure, not a chain of individual reflexes.

The price sits on the opposite side. Vinícius Júnior started, and he was not himself. No more one-against-one breaks that make a stadium hold its breath, no more swagger in every touch. Real Madrid's left flank in this match was a silent corridor: the ball arrived, then went back, and nothing happened.

When a team is winning, people overlook this asymmetry. But it is a structural weakness, and it sits exactly where it is easiest to exploit: if an opponent blocks the crossing lane from the right, Real Madrid lose their main supply line without an equivalent option on the left.

A management decision, not a tactical one

The young signing stayed on the bench at kick-off. He came on, scored one and assisted one. But starting him among the substitutes was not a calculation about the opponent. It was a calculation about the dressing room.

A star who once defined the club's identity is fading. A newcomer arrives carrying positive energy. Pushing the newcomer in too early, in front of the incumbent, is the fastest way to open a crack that cannot be welded shut. Holding him back, introducing him gradually, letting the succession unfold as a process rather than a coup — that is a principle very few coaches manage, because it requires ignoring the pressure of immediate results.

They gave me access to the dressing room, but what they withheld was the way they change the captain's armband. How a club handles its old guard is what tells you how far it can travel.

Two saves and a story told backwards

There is one detail I consider the most important of the match, and it is barely mentioned: before Real Madrid opened the scoring, Thibaut Courtois had to make two saves. Not ordinary ones. Two moments where a slightly lesser goalkeeper would have left the hosts a goal down.

Real Madrid were not good in the first 40 minutes. The match reports themselves admit it, though in gentler language. The team stuttered, lost rhythm, and left gaps between the lines. After the goal, the story flipped: from laboured to controlling, from rattled to composed.

I have seen this pattern hundreds of times. It is not lying. It is how memory works: people remember a match by its scoreline, then rewrite the first 40 minutes to fit it. Control in football is a state confirmed after the ball has hit the net, not a property proven beforehand.

What the reports leave out

The press immediately assembled the image of an attacking quartet already in gear: Mbappé, Bellingham, Arda Güler and the youngster who had just shone. I read that line three times and it is still wrong in its tense. Those four have never started a single minute together. The 19-year-old came on when the opponent had lost organisation, when the match had already tilted, when the space was twice its normal size. Those are ideal conditions for a young player to make an impression. Starting from the first minute against a back line holding its positions is a different profession.

And here I have to be blunt about the quality of what we are reading. Among the reports around this match, some assign names to Real Madrid that do not belong to them: a coach who left the club in 2026, a midfielder who has played in England since 2026, a right-back currently at another club. Those pieces read smoothly, plausibly, and are entirely unverifiable.

Readers today have to do something my generation did not: check whether the writer knows who he is writing about.

The contrarian view: a four-goal streak is not proof of strength

Three consecutive four-goal games is a handsome statistic. It is also an easy one to misread.

What matters is the type of opponent. One side, after a 1-6 defeat, psychologically broken, chose to trade punches. Another opened its shape chasing a goal. Four goals against opponents like that says nothing about the ability to break a low, disciplined block that concedes the ball and waits. Barcelona at El Clasico are not that type of opponent, but they will not be foolish enough to trade attacks with Real Madrid either.

There is a line I keep returning to when writing about teams in full flight: the quietest drumbeat is the one that leads the whole match. At Real Madrid right now, that drumbeat is not in the attack. It is in Courtois' hands and in Vinícius' legs.

What to watch

25 October will not answer every question about Real Madrid. It will answer one specific question: can the right flank still produce when the crossing lane is closed?

I will watch the first 20 minutes. If Valverde is still free to receive on the touchline, if Bellingham still finds space behind the opposing left-back, the system is real. If the crosses are blocked at source and Real Madrid have to turn to the left, where Vinícius is still searching for himself, we will know where this team actually stands.

I write from behind the fence, where no flash reaches, and I have learned that big matches are not decided by the best player on the pitch. They are decided by the player the opponent forgot to account for.

At Real Madrid right now, who is that?