25-year-old Real Madrid forward lacking in end product despite shining in other aspects of his game | OneFootball

With the arrival of Kylian Mbappe at Real Madrid in the last summer transfer window, Carlo Ancelotti’s options for his forward line were fairly obvious.

In all of the various setups that he could have adopted for his team, Vinicius Junior and Kylian Mbappe were taken for granted to be the fixed starters, while Rodrygo Goes’ presence in the starting lineup depended mostly on the formation that the Italian would pick.

In such circumstances, it was believed that Brahim Diaz, who had contributed a lot to the Merengue team’s successes in the last season, would remain limited to the bench, mostly as a rotation piece.

However, owing to the injuries suffered by the likes of Vinicius Junior, Rodrygo, and Kylian Mbappe in this first half of the season, Brahim has been playing a lot of games this season.

Despite his own injury-related absences, he has accumulated 13 appearances in La Liga this season, with 6 starts, and another 3 appearances in the UEFA Champions League, with 2 starts. In total, he has played 587 minutes in La Liga and 219 minutes in the UCL.

He has once again proved to be highly influential for Real Madrid this season, and his contributions to the team’s attack have been highly encouraging.

However, one concerning aspect that he has been showing in his game this season is his relative lack of end product, as he has only 2 goals and 2 assists in La Liga, and 0 goals and 1 assist in UCL. One of these league goals came only in the last game against Sevilla.

Thus, Sofascore notes that he is scoring after every 294 minutes in the league and is scoring 0.2 goals on average in every game. His goal conversion rate stands at 29%, and he also has missed 2 big chances up to now.

On the other hand, he still remains quite integral in the build-up phase whenever he is playing on the pitch. He has created 3 big chances this season and provided 0.9 key passes on average in every game. His passing success rate also stands at 87%, as he completes 18.8 passes in each game, 12.1 of which are given in the opposition half.

He is also quite good with the ball at his feet as he successfully completes 64% of his attempted dribbles and 53% of his ground duels.

Ancelotti would also be quite satisfied with his defensive contributions, as he makes 0.2 interceptions and 1.1 tackles each game on average and recovers the ball 1.9 times.

Overall, Brahim has been quite good for Real Madrid and the only area where he continues to lag behind is that of the end product. Hopefully, he will also improve on this crucial side of his game as he returns from his winter holidays, and entertain the fans with some goals and assists in the second half of the season.