Real Madrid vs Arsenal UCL 2025 - Match Preview

Real Madrid has been embarrassed in front of its home crowd at Santiago Bernabeu. All this came after what happened in the first leg of the Champions League. Arsenal was all over Real Madrid back in the Emirates. They lost possession, sat back and defended, and let Arsenal take on the play. 

We all thought Bernabeu would do something again, but it looked like a cold Champions League night for the champions. 

Fans did not fault it; we could see they gave their all into this, and all the blame should come down to the players. 

Real Madrid has invested millions into assembling this team, only to be kicked out by the youngsters from North London. The likes of Kylian Mbappe and Vinicius Junior should take up the responsibility that they were given. 

Real Madrid and its fans had chased Mbappe viciously for years. Mbappe had already broken the hearts of Madridistas way back in 2022 with his decision to stay at PSG. Real Madrid waited for its star man, but that wait has not been any sweeter to Real Madrid. 

All we are seeing is average performance from stars like Mbappe and Vinicius. 

Even though we get it, Kylian Mbappe is not a striker. We know how versatile he was when he played for PSG; he operated from anywhere in the field, from left to right to center, you name it, he was there to perform. 

But we are not seeing that exact level of performance from him in a Real Madrid Jersey. 

Well, also it's not always best to point all the blame to a player, but we could observe what is “so wrong” about our attacking forwards. 

The first thing that I noticed was Vinicus not being able to find anyone, we can see there has been a drop in the quality of his play. He tries dribbling past players but has been unsuccessful so many times. This is very frequent against pacey players. 

There was no coordination between Vini and Mbappe. It looked like they were playing a very different game altogether, and god knows what Ancelloti said in that half-time talk, the team became more horrible after the half-time whistle.

There is a lack of coordination among the squad that is hurting the team overall. 

All Real Madrid did was try crossing from the byline, but the crosses were getting blocked by Arsenal defenders, or Vini was not finding anyone in the middle. I also came to know that Mbappe is not a number 9; he does not at all behave or have an attribute to play as a striker for Real Madrid. We can also only see his deadliest version when he plays on the wings.

The defensive option was horrible, even though with 2 yellow cards under 30 minutes, David Alaba was slipping in dangerous tackles like he was playing on PlayStation. A mature defender should have done much more going forward than just letting Saka do his thing.  

Even though the defense was bad, it was the Attacking that let the team down, the only bright spot in the team was Thibu coming in to save that crucial penalty. It is only he who should have been allowed to greet the fans after the horrible show from the defending champions.