Marco Asensio He has not started since December 1, when Real Madrid fell to Shakhtar at the Kiev Olympics, leaving his qualification for the Champions League round of 16 in question and putting Zinedine Zidane on the ropes on the white bench . That painful defeat in Ukraine, together with the one suffered in the League a few days before against Alavés at the Alfredo Di Stéfano stadium, left some players touched, one of them Asensio himself.
The Balearic Islands lives immersed in a certain vagueness this course. After reappearing in the final express leg of last season after a serious injury and do it with a good tone, scoring up to three goals and being a participant in the great streak that led Madrid to win their league number 34, he still does not return to that version that is expected of a player who came to amaze in some sections of his two first white campaigns, 2016-17 and 2017-18.
Asensio was a participant in the five consecutive victories that Madrid achieved at just the right moment, against Borussia Mönchengladbach in the Champions League to ensure qualification for the second round of the Champions League and against Sevilla, Atlético, Athletic and Eibar in the League, but always acting from the bench he didn’t do enough to convince Zidane that he should be ahead of Lucas Vázquez or Rodrygo.
However, against Granada the story was different and the Mallorcan gave the extra that is required of a player of his level. The Rodrygo muscle injury In an action at speed against Foulquier in the final stretch of the first half, he gave Asensio more minutes than he is used to in recent weeks. In a stuck game, without the fluidity in the center of the field that Luka Modric’s mastery usually gives him, the left-hander was able to offer depth to your team. This was evident in the play of the first goal, when in the old fashioned way, as a left-handed winger of those who are now few, he won the baseline to put the center that Casemiro sent headlong to the bottom of the Nasrid net.
It was the most important action, the one that ultimately ended up unbalancing a match that Benzema sentenced already in the last minutes, but by no means the only one that Asensio left throughout a great second half, as the stick avoided a goal that It would have been fantasy after heel spike, the kind that show talented players’ ability to find resources where others barely imagine them. It was seen overflow, participation and association capacity with Benzema. Arguments that together with Rodrygo’s injury bring him back to Zidane’s starting eleven, although with more possibilities on the left side than on that right flank in which he had been acting more in recent times and that Lucas Vázquez seems to have made his own.
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