Real Madrid’s Unbalancing Act: How Many Galácticos Is Too Many Galácticos?

Real Madrid enter El Clásico with uncertainty hanging over them. How do they replace Toni Kroos and also get the best out of Kylian Mbappé? Can Carlo Ancelotti re-establish balance in the team, or will their weaknesses bring their golden era to an end?

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

When Real Madrid sold Claude Makélélé to Chelsea in 2003 and signed David Beckham, Florentino Pérez assumed a youngster would emerge from the club’s academy to take the French midfielder’s place. “He rarely passes the ball further than three metres,” said Pérez, making light of the loss. Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri, delighted with the signing, declared Makélélé the new battery in his Rolex.

Having won La Liga the year before, Real Madrid could only finish fourth the following season and struggled to find a replacement for the French midfielder for several years.

Toni Kroos called time on his playing career this summer and leaves a hole even bigger than the one Makélélé left in Madrid’s midfield when he packed his bags for Stamford Bridge. The situations have similarities but are also very different. Kroos retired of his own volition and Pérez, presumably, now understands the importance of a player that binds the team together.

Kylian Mbappé finally landed in Barajas airport this summer as the Beckham in our story. He’s turning 26 soon and needs Madrid more than they need him. He is yet to win the Ballon d’Or or a major club trophy beyond Ligue 1 or one of the French cup competitions despite being widely considered the heir apparent to Lionel Messi and the last generation of football superstars.

Madrid have just won a league and Champions League double and looked like they might dominate, at least domestically, for a decade. They’ve produced four of the last seven Ballon d’Or winners and have another winner, Vinícius Júnior, waiting to be announced next week. Mbappé figured that to take that next step in his career, he needed to be playing his football at the Santiago Bernabéu.

Six months into this new era for Madrid, and Carlo Ancelotti has a job on his hands to re-establish balance in his team. Real Madrid’s lineups read more like a shortlist for the Ballon d’Or award but, as a team, they’re not sure where they’re going.

If, in Makélélé, Real Madrid lost the battery, in losing Kroos, they’ve lost their GPS. And so, as Los Blancos prepare to face a rampant Barcelona in Saturday’s El Clásico, we’re back to the question that was asked back in the summer of 2003: how many galácticos is too many galácticos?

Jude’s Exhausting, Expanding Role

The consequences of Mbappé’s arrival and Kroos’ departure have not been confined to the two positions they both occupy on the field. Everything has shifted, responsibilities changed and the equilibrium of the team lost.

One player in particular who has been asked to alter his game is Jude Bellingham.

There’s a sense of maturity that belies Bellingham’s age. Or maybe it’s a sense of destiny. Cometh the hour, cometh the Bellingham. When he scored the winner for England against Slovakia at Euro 2024, he said repeatedly: “Who else?”

Ole Gunnar Solskjær spoke recently about meeting with Bellingham at Old Trafford regarding a potential move to Manchester United, saying: “He was 17 at the time, and he was the most mature 17-year-old I’ve ever met – he had it all planned out.”

When Karim Benzema left Madrid last year, Bellingham knew what was needed: goals. He bagged 19 of them in his debut La Liga campaign with six assists. Now Kroos is gone, he instinctively understands the team needs help in midfield, which he has duly tried to provide.

But he cuts a frustrated figure trying to recalibrate the team.

Bellingham’s attacking numbers have dipped since his debut season. His xG per 90 has almost halved from 0.36 to 0.21 this season. His touches inside the penalty area and passes in the opposition’s half have also dropped. He is yet to score a goal this season and has just one assist in the league and another in the Champions League.

Last season, the team was built around him. This season, he is trying to build the team around his superstar teammates. In 2024-25, Bellingham has played 87% of his minutes in central and left midfield. In 2023-24, he played as the central attacking midfielder in 66% of his 3,316 minutes in La Liga.

The English all-rounder dined on long balls over the top into the penalty area last year while playing in a position that blurred the lines between false nine, central midfielder and box-crashing attacking midfielder. That pass isn’t on anymore mainly because Kroos isn’t there to produce them, but he’d also have competition for those runs in behind with Mbappé constantly loitering in search of goals. And on top of that, Bellingham is wary of pushing too far forward given his duties as a central midfielder. He isn’t getting into positions to receive passes in central attacking areas nearly as much.

This season, he has played everywhere, blurring the lines between water-carrier and superhero, and against Celta Vigo we saw him play as a right midfielder when Madrid were defending but before pushing up into a more central position while attacking. The sense of responsibility has seen his tackles and interceptions per 90 increase on last year.

In fact, his defensive numbers are the only thing going upwards this season, which isn’t necessarily the direction Real Madrid want to go in when his talents in attack are so rare. But he can’t help himself and we saw as much against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League this week. In the dying moments when Madrid were leading 4-2 in stoppage time, he made a burst to close down a cross, allowing Vinícius to counter and ultimately score to secure his hat-trick.

Ancelotti the Tinkerman

Part of the problem is Bellingham is being asked – or feels naturally obliged – to drop back to help with build-up. He often dropped into midfield against Celta, pointing performatively at his teammates where to play the ball to bring it out from the back successfully.

But not even Bellingham can do what Kroos did. Maybe nobody can. Without him, they have no orchestrator of their build-up. They are trying to recreate Kroos, as Billy Beane said in Moneyball, in the aggregate. And everyone’s suffering.

On Saturday night at Balaídos, Ancelotti added a new wrinkle to the early stages of Madrid’s possessions with Aurélien Tchouaméni dropping deeper as the central player in a back three. The manager explained it as something he tried due to how Celta played, but it was also an effort to fix a broken build-up.

Against Dortmund, he opted for Federico Valverde as the sole pivot with Luka Modric and Bellingham further forward and Ferland Mendy, who didn’t start against Celta, making up the difference at the back beside Antonio Rüdiger and Éder Militão.

Dropping Tchouaméni in possession potentially draws out the other team’s press and gets him involved in less congested areas of the field where he can receive while facing the play. Playing Valverde there means you have more defensive cover against counters, but neither are optimal solutions in terms of building out from the back.

So, what exactly did Toni Kroos bring to the team?

Knock-On Effects

Kroos last pulled on a Real Madrid jersey six months ago. Despite his retirement, his stature continues to grow.

Last season, he averaged 112.7 touches per 90 across 3,182 minutes in all competitions. This season, no Real Madrid player with 500 minutes played is averaging close to that. Modric, who is 39 and only plays sparingly, is closest with 100.1 per 90 and it looks like they are leaning increasingly on the Croatian to bring some of the nuance that Kroos brought. After Modric, Militão (82.4) and Tchouaméni (81.6) are touching the ball the most.

Kroos created 62 chances last season in La Liga. Only three midfielders – Ilkay Gündogan, Álex Baena and Isco – had more, and none of whom were also their team’s primary orchestrators. Only Aleix García tried and completed more switches than Kroos. And maybe more importantly, no midfielder in the league completed more successful long passes than Kroos last season (231).

Kroos attempted 2,499 passes last season, behind only Kirian Rodríguez and García, and his completion rate was the highest in Spain – 94.7%.

To say Kroos went out on top is an understatement. If the goal is to always keep the fans wanting more, then the German’s timing, as ever, was perfect.

Madrid’s 60% possession is second in La Liga this season but might give a false sense of how much they actually control the game. The reality is, most teams sit off Madrid by default because of their attacking prowess. Much of their possession is stale and leads to nothing, which explains their 14.0 non-penalty xG this season, which is fifth in La Liga. With Kroos there, you weren’t as comfortable sitting off because of the different ways he could hurt you. He averaged 32.5 forward passes per game and Modric is only averaging 22.5 this season.

With all that being said, putting Kroos’ influence into numbers also does it some injustice. It confuses art with science. Kroos wasn’t just able to carry all these passes in his repertoire, he also knew exactly the right moment to use each one. He had a sixth sense for when the opposition’s defence was overloading to the left before hitting you with a switch to the right. He knew when an extra pass backwards was needed to make sure to avoid a quick turnover.

A Pressing Issue

Despite the previous words on the problems they are facing in possession, they can still win by brute attacking force – as we saw against Dortmund on Tuesday night when they came back from two goals down to win 5-2. Their press, however, is an issue that might be their undoing.

Real Madrid have always had a problem with their press. It’s hard to build a system that works consistently when you have players in the team like Vinícius and Mbappé, who were born to score goals and focus on attacking. It’s part of the reason why Madrid have never opted for a dogmatic coach and have always been most successful with pragmatic ones who can sense the emotional tenor of the dressing room and adjust accordingly.

Valverde has always been happy to work twice as hard so his teammates can shine. Eduardo Camavinga isn’t afraid to put in a shift either, and Bellingham too has been recruited to carry some of the load. But Valverde has played 6,922 minutes for club and country since the start of last season, the most among all outfield players in the top five leagues in that time. Bellingham is further down the list but has played 5,753 minutes for Real Madrid and England at just 21 in a combative area of the field. Against Dortmund, Valverde put in another shift, playing the entire 90 with Barcelona just four days down the road. He has started and finished all of Real Madrid’s 14 games this season.

It’s only when you take a close look at the data that you can see how this Madrid side are suffering out of possession. They have already conceded two goals from high turnovers; last season, they only conceded three from high turnovers in 51 games. They are allowing 1.9 direct attacks against them per game in 2024-25, when in 2023-24 that was just 1.0 per match.

Madrid have some of the very best defenders on the planet, so it tends to be fine. They’ll likely sit deeper against better opposition and in away games, which will help, but against the best teams in the world, having no pressure in your own half is just asking for trouble. It’s not unusual for opposition midfielders to look around waiting for pressure to arrive, like in the picture below for Celta’s leveller last weekend. The lack of intensity is almost disconcerting for Hugo Sotelo, on the ball as Mbappé and Vinícius stroll after him. Celta created four big chances, with Madrid only creating one.

The same thing happened early against Dortmund. As Mbappé jogs between two defenders, Bellingham steps up and they are passed through with Modric throwing his arms out in frustration. This happened in the opening 10 minutes of the game. Within 10 seconds and without a hand being laid on a Dortmund player, they had the ball in Madrid’s penalty area.

The take-home point from Real Madrid’s start to the season is that Toni Kroos is hard to replace and it affects every aspect of Madrid’s tactics. They’ve huffed and puffed in his absence but are still only three points off the lead in La Liga and have lost just once in the Champions League despite being arguably the worst side across the entire 270 minutes they’ve played this season in that competition.

It would be silly to tell Madrid not to rely on epic comebacks as a strategy. It’s not something replicable or easy to do. And yet, this is Madrid’s strategy.

Bigger tests lay ahead for Madrid and it starts this weekend against Barcelona, who are coming off their own three-goal win over Bundesliga opposition. Will the cracks appear again and undo them? Or will Madrid continue to survive on vibes and moments of magic from their best players?

It’s tempting to say the former but don’t bet against the latter.

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