Vinicius Junior was back to his brilliant best and Kylian Mbappe bagged a brace as Real Madrid battered Monaco, 6-1, on Tuesday. Vinicius provided three assists, scored a wonderful goal and was a constant menace. Mbappe opened the scoring with two goals of hisown, while an unfortunate own goal from Thilo Kehrer and a smooth strike from Jude Bellingham rounded off a memorable night in Alvaro Arbeloa’s first Champions League game in charge.<\/p>\n
Madrid may not have had the lion’s share of possession, but they were devastating on the break, and Mbappe broke the deadlock with a fine slotted finish from a Federico Valverde pass. The France captain added a second just short of the half-hour mark, this time linking up with Vinicius, whose curled ball fell to the feet of Mbappe for an easy finish.<\/p>\n
Madrid put the game to bed early in the second half as Vinicius assisted the third with a quick turn and deft roll of the ball into Franco Mastantuono, who dutifully stroked his effort into the bottom corner. Kehrer’s own goal – off another Vinicius pass – made it four, and the Brazilian continued his fine evening of work to make it five with a powerful strike.<\/p>\n
Madrid weren’t error-free as a silly giveaway in their own box rather gifted a goal to Jordan Teze, but Bellingham rounded off the scoring as he joined Vinicius in bouncing back from being booed by his own fans last time out.<\/p>\n
GOAL<\/strong> rates Madrid’s players from the Bernabeu…<\/p>\n Thibaut Courtois<\/strong> (6\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Didn’t really have a save to make. Saw a shot hit the bar, and could do nothing about the goal.<\/p>\n Federico Valverde (8\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Held his position a little more with Guler dropping deep. Effective when he did attack, though, and grabbed two assists.<\/p>\n Raul Asencio<\/strong> (6\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Not his most involved appearance. Missed a couple of passes in 45 middling minutes.<\/p>\n Dean Huijsen<\/strong> (6\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Won headers, moved the ball, but could have cleared his lines in the run up to Monaco’s goal.<\/p>\n Eduardo Camavinga<\/strong> (7\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n A solid shift at left-back, where he seems to be something of a forgotten man. Made an impressive block in the second half.<\/p>\n Arda Guler<\/strong> (8\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Created three chances and grabbed an assist. His best performance in a while.<\/p>\n Aurelien Tchouameni<\/strong> (6\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Held down the centre of midfield, but was far less certain in defence.<\/p>\n Jude Bellingham (8\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Did a lot of dirty work, missed a good chance, but got himself involved in build-up play. Scored the sixth with a delightful bit of footwork.<\/p>\n Franco Mastantuono (7\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Did a lot of the running for the team, and was rewarded with a goal.<\/p>\n Kylian Mbappe (9\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Scored twice in the first half, and moved the ball much more effectively than in recent weeks. Might have actually pressed once or twice, too.<\/p>\n Vinicius Jr (10\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Pretty much unplayable. Scored one and assisted three to deliver the perfect response to his haters.<\/p>\n Dani Ceballos<\/strong> (7\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Brought on for midfield legs at half-time. Gave Madrid a little more control.<\/p>\n Gonzalo Garcia<\/strong> (6\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n Relieved the tired Mastantuono – and didn’t have much of an impact.<\/p>\n Dani Carvajal<\/strong> (N\/A):<\/strong><\/p>\n No time to make an impact.<\/p>\n Fran Garcia (N\/A):<\/strong><\/p>\n No time to make an impact.<\/p>\n Dani Meso (N\/A):<\/strong><\/p>\n A nice run out for the academy kid.<\/p>\n Alvaro Arbeloa (9\/10):<\/strong><\/p>\n That’ll do! This was quite comfortably the best Madrid showing of the season, as Los Blancos had their Champions League mojo back. The (rather delayed) new manager bounce is real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY Vinicius Junior was back to his brilliant best and Kylian Mbappe bagged a brace as Real Madrid battered Monaco, 6-1, on Tuesday. Vinicius provided three assists, scored a wonderful goal and was a constant menace. Mbappe opened the scoring with two goals of hisown, while an unfortunate own goal from Thilo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}