Rodrygo comes out of the hole and Vinícius exceeds 1,000 minutes without scoring

Real Madrid’s Brazilian attacker Rodrygo Goes scored in Mendizorroza against Deportivo Alavés in his second consecutive match after breaking a drought of 32 games without scoring a goal against Manchester City in the Champions League, to get out of a football and emotional slump, with another goal that also allowed the Merengue team to win and follow in the wake of FC Barcelona for the league lead.

“My boy is back.” This was the phrase that Jude Bellingham dedicated to the São Paulo winger on social networks, on a night that confirms that Rodrygo is back and has left the bad feelings behind. Xabi Alonso once again trusted the ’11’ as a starter against Deportivo Alavés after scoring Madrid’s only goal against City, and the player responded in a remarkable way.

In these last two games, Rodrygo has finished on 5 occasions -2 against City and 3 against Alavés- to score 2 goals. Furthermore, he has participated much more in the Madrid attack, with 126 total ball actions between the two games, creating up to 4 scoring chances.

Some data that acquires more relevance and value when compared with his streak of more than 30 games without seeing a goal. And since Rodrygo scored in Madrid’s 2-1 victory over Atlético de Madrid in the first leg of the round of 16 of the last edition of the Champions League, they have played almost 1,500 minutes with the white shirt without scoring.

In that period, in 29 League and Champions League games, he added 1,056 actions with the ball, with an average of less than 37 per game, almost half of the more than 60 he has averaged against Manchester City and Alavés. For this reason, he only created 17 scoring chances – a little more than 1 every 2 games -, assisting only on 1 occasion – in addition to another assist in the only game he started the Club World Cup -.

Furthermore, his influence on the white attack was much less, finishing in the 32 drought games – he started only 14 – a total of 38 times, adding just over 1 shot per game. Very low figures that now clash with the improved version of a Rodrygo who seems to play, even on the right, with less pressure and more comfortable alongside Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior.

Precisely, this scoring improvement is not seen in a Brazilian ‘7’ who has already surpassed the barrier of 1,000 minutes without scoring – since the double against Villarreal on October 4 -. ‘Vini’ went from less to more against Alavés, highly demanded by full-back Jonny Otto, attempting up to 7 dribbles in Mendizorroza and only successfully completing 2 of them, less than half.

The Carioca is not as fine and fresh in the one-on-one as before, and is less dangerous in front of goal. This Sunday he tried once, but was met with a big handball from goalkeeper Antonio Sivera. But in a match in which he seemed to show his reconciliation with Xabi Alonso, hugging the coach at 1-2 and after his substitution around the 90th minute, he once again made the most of his role as an assistant.

In that second Real Madrid goal from Rodrygo, the winger went powerfully down the left and left the ’11’ alone to score the winning goal and add his eighth assist of the season – 3 of them in the Champions League, the same as in the European competition last season – in 23 games between the League and the Champions League.

There are already half of the assists of the 16 he gave in a last season with 57 games played by the Rio player, who has become the player with the most assists for the Merengue team so far this season, surpassing this Sunday the 7 that the Turkish Arda Güler has distributed so far.