Jude Bellingham, last season’s hero, has exploded into the type of form that made Los Blancos the European and Spanish winners, while questions surround Kylian Mbappe’s debut at Real Madrid. In La Liga, Madrid will play Girona on Saturday. Girona was the side that came closest to winning the championship before a late slump in play caused them to slide to third place. After losing to Athletic Bilbao in the middle of the week, when Mbappe missed his second penalty in less than a week, Carlo Ancelotti’s team still has a game left to play against leaders Barcelona, who now lead them by four points.
On the other hand, Bellingham scored for the fourth consecutive league game and is taking on a lot of responsibility because Brazilian winger Vinicius Junior is sidelined.
Bellingham scored ten goals in his first ten games for the team last season, but he went 12 games goalless in all competitions this season before breaking his duck.
“I arrived last summer and the club lost arguably one of the greatest goal scorers of the generation in Karim Benzema,” Bellingham said this week.
We expect him to achieve that as a team because we signed Mbappe this year, one of the finest players of this generation, and he has scored a ton of goals.
“For me, I know then my role differs, which I’m happy to do… (but) I also want to take that responsibility — now I’ve got the smell for it again in these last couple of games.”
After Bellingham’s strong performance against Athletic on Wednesday brought his team back to parity, a Fede Valverde error gave the Basque team a 2-1 victory, ending Real Madrid’s three-game winning streak in La Liga.
Last season, the England international sent a strong message to the Catalan minnows that they were still rungs below the elite by helping Los Blancos win 3-0 at Girona’s Montilivi stadium with a goal and an incredible assist.
In February, Madrid took control of the championship chase when Bellingham scored twice against Girona in a 4-0 thumping at home.
After only losing twice during the whole previous season, Madrid has now dropped five games in all competitions this year.
On Wednesday, Ancelotti said, “We’re not as solid as we were last year, but we’ve improved on certain things in recent games.”
“We’ll start getting players back now and we’ll improve, that’s for sure.”
Girona is now in seventh place after losing a number of players in the summer and suffering injuries this season.
Leaders Barcelona hopes to pull seven points ahead of Madrid before kickoff at Montilivi when they host Real Betis early on Saturday.
On Sunday night, Diego Simeone’s third-place Atletico Madrid will host Sevilla.
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