Brazilian star’s efforts not enough as Real Madrid crash out of the UCL | OneFootball

Real Madrid put in another horrid performance last night, and immediately had to pay the price as they were eliminated from their favourite competition, the UEFA Champions League, at the quarter-final stage.

The Merengues came into this game with a 3-goal deficit from the first leg. However, keeping in view their recent history, their supporters had a lot of reason to keep hoping of another miracle from their team at the Santiago Bernabeu.

However, this was not to be as Los Blancos also ended up losing the second leg 2-1, losing the tie with a 5-1 aggregate score.

Naturally, there were not a lot of positives to take from this game as the entire team performed significantly below its expected standards in such an important match.

Still, there were some players who at least made the effort to keep their team in contention for a semi-final spot, and this was particularly true for the Brazilian star Vinicius Junior.

Although he has also been far from his best level for most of the season, he scored the only goal for Real Madrid in this quarter-final tie. This goal was quite symbolic of the way the Brazilian was trying to make things happen despite being far from his best level.

Without any doubt, this was also not a very good outing for the Samba star, who got on the ball 63 times in the 90 minutes he played. As Sofascore statistics show, he lost possession a whopping 26 times in this match and attempted only 18 passes, of which 11 were accurate. Also, only 2 of his 11 attempted crosses were accurate.

Still, the fact that he was trying to make things happen in the opposition’s box is clear from the fact that 3 of these 18 passes were key passes. Furthermore, he took 6 shots, 2 of which were on target, 1 was off-target, while 3 were blocked by Arsenal defenders.

The Brazilian star also made his required defensive contributions, recording 1 interception and 5 total tackles on the night.

One can argue that the fans were expecting a lot more from Vinicius in this tie, keeping in view his stature at Real Madrid in the world of football at large. However, he is one of the few Merengue players who can still come out of this match with his head held high, something that cannot be said for most of his teammates.