Valverde goes for James

Hawk on the prowl the canyon of Fede Valverde It has started working again and there is no stopping it. The supernova of a footballer who at 24, he has reinvented himself. It’s never too late and for him, it’s actually early. The goal has gone from antonym to synonym: Until this season, I had never done more than three in the same course. Three, that was her ceiling. The figure contrasts with the current one: it already has 12. It has been released in long shots and Ancelotti has discovered that in his right hand, there was gold. He gave her confidence, encouraged her to try it and now, she is reaping fruits. Valverde has become a gunboat… and stalks James Rodríguez.

No Real Madrid midfielder, since the coffee grower in 2015, he had scored 12 goals in the same season. That course the bar was much higher: James signed 17 claws, the best record of his entire career. He came from doing 8 in Monaco and the following years, he did 8 and 11, respectively. The 17 have been for years an unbeatable record for anyone. Until today. He Birdie has turned into Hawk and at 12, you can already afford to fantasize. It has margin and is on the right track: score every 231 ‘and Madrid has a minimum of 20 more games left (which could be 21 with the Cup final and up to 26, if it reached the Champions League). But counting on the 20 ‘fixed’, there are 1,800 more minutes of football: keeping his pace, he would score almost 8 more goals (7.89, specifically). ‘Cazaria’ to James.

The key: trust yourself

And not only that, but it would be on the edge of the 20, a figure with which his teammates now hesitate in the locker room. “Now they tell me to get to 20! (laugh)! With what it is costing me to score goals! For many years I opted for passes, instead of shooting, because I had no confidence. Today that is different; I know that when I encourage myself, 80% can be a goal”, he confessed after the victory in Pamplona. There he was decisive to appear from behind and turn Vinicius’s lateral center into dynamite. A 0-1 that broke the red wall and kept alive the dream of LaLiga. It is still difficult, but from stumbling, she had become utopian.

on a roll

Valverde is already, again, Valverde. He has scored four goals in the last four games: against Al Ahly in the Club World Cup semifinal, a double against Al Hilal in the final and the one just mentioned, in Pamplona. Point and end to a drought that lasted 13 games, the time he was without scoring with Real Madrid. She returned from Qatar psychologically touched by the World Cup blow and the setback that life gave her with the problems in the pregnancy of her second child. Fortunately, the latter has ended in a happy ending and the player himself, how could it be otherwise, now shines with an inevitable joy. Things begin to accompany and with them, the goals. That they fall again They are going 12 this season (7 in the League, two in the Champions League and three in the Club World Cup). He’s only five off James’ record.