Defending champions Real Madrid resume their UEFA Champions League 2024-25 campaign with they welcome Borussia Dortmund to the Santiago Bernabeu on Wednesday, in a replay of last year’s final.
Real Madrid amped up their firepower upfront with the acquisition of French superstar Kylian Mbappe, but are yet to completely integrate the World Cup winner in their plans in order to get the best out of the mercurial striker.
Ahead of the Spanish champions’ fixture against the German heavyweights, Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti stated that he would rather prefer the 25-year-old get on the scoresheet over his work rate pressing high up the field.
“I prefer that Mbappe scores goals than he presses,” Ancelotti said.
“The central striker position in our team has not changed, I ask him the same I asked of Karim Benzema,” the Italian added.
“To be well positioned and to be ready every time we get the ball back to make a rapid transition,” he elucidated.
The arrival of Mbappe has forced Madrid to deploy English star Jude Bellingham in a deeper role, and the midfielder is yet to net in the ongoing campaign, in stark contrast to his performances for the Los Blancos last season.
“We’re satisfied with his work because he works a lot on the pitch, he’s always there, he competes, fights, sacrifices himself,” said Ancelotti.
“The truth is he hasn’t scored the goals he did last year, but the surprise isn’t this year, it’s last year, he scored a heap of goals that no-one expected,” the 65-year-old continued.
“We’ve always scored goals and we’ll always score goals, we have players with great attacking talent up front, so for us at this moment, the work he is doing is much more important for us,” Ancelotti asserted.
Ancelotti also expressed he would like to see his side play an end-to-end game, rather than a possession-based style, citing the abilities of the personnel involved.
“I want rock and roll football because I have players with these characteristics,” Ancelotti revealed.
“We find it harder to play a game based on possession and control because we don’t have players with characteristics to play in reduced spaces,” the Real Madrid boss added.
“A back-and-forth game suits us well, but we’re focussed on defending better as we did very well last year,” Ancelotti concluded.
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