Gareth Bale, Sergio Ramos, and James Rodriguez have all stayed behind in Madrid to work on recovering from injuries, leaving the task of defeating the Allsvenskan champs more or less single-handedly to Cristiano Ronaldo.
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Though Real Madrid did of course secure a tenth European Cup/Champions League triumph in 2013/14 the La Liga side failed to reach the final in any of the other five seasons Ronaldo has been at the club, a record far below that of arch rivals Barcelona.
All four missed Madrid’s disappointing 0-0 draw at home to Malaga on Saturday due to injury.
Real Madrid travel to Swedish side Malmo for the second round of fixtures in the Champions League group stage hoping to put the disappointment of the 0-0 draw at the weekend behind them and pick up from where they left off in the Champions League, having beaten Shakhtar Donetsk 4-0 in their opening game. ‘He’s a guarantee of goals’. He has my absolute confidence. I’m happy with the defensive and attacking midfield.
A squad bristling with world-class finishers such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema does not need to change its habits to rediscover its scoring touch, he said.
Real Madrid will be widely expected to make it two wins out of two as they go to Sweden for their next Group A match. No other player has scored yet, so at this point it seems vital that the likes of Isco, Jese and Luka Modric feature on the score-sheet sooner rather than later.
Benitez has been criticised in a few quarters in Spain for being a too defensively-minded coach for Madrid, but the former Napoli boss has shrugged off such comments.
The Madrid media, even Real Madrid themselves, could be forgiven for overlooking this arguably winnable fixture, something great teams occasionally do when they have a seemingly bigger challenge ahead of them. Two were connected to the much-awaited reunion between Iker Casillas and Jose Mourinho (allow me to consider that Real Madrid-related news) in Porto. But the difference lies in the quality of the players.
“This is a fantastic game”, Malmo captain Markus Rosenberg said to AS newspaper.
“If you’re in the Champions League it’s because you’re of a standard”.
“Against a team that sits in, we can improve the way we play the ball out, our composure, but we did a lot of things well”.
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“We can only fight on and get up as high as possible in the table”.
