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News

MIÉ 19.12.2018 | News

Llorente presenting his case for a place in Madrid’s midfield

After coming through Real Madrid’s academy, Llorente is making the most of his game time playing as a defensive midfielder following Casemiro’s injury, showing his fantastic qualities in both starting attacks and defending.

News

MIÉ 19.12.2018

Marcos Llorente, born in 1995, is a product of Real Madrid’s youth academy. In the summer of 2016 he packed his bags to head to Vitoria, representing D. Alaves for one season. His performances went down a storm and he boasted the record of having won back the highest number of balls in the whole of the league. Following this loan spell Llorente returned to his parent club and signed a new contract in September 2017, because the 23-year-old has always had one clear goal in mind – succeeding at Real Madrid.

The Madrid-born midfielder has started his side’s last three LaLiga Santander games, against Valencia CF, SD Huesca and Rayo Vallecano. This has coincided with Madrid’s impressive run of form – they won all three of these games, equalling their best form this season. In addition to picking up maximum points, Madrid kept clean sheets in the three aforementioned matches, a record not equalled since September 2015 when Rafa Benitez was in charge of Los Blancos.

If one takes a look at Llorente’s LaLiga Santander statistics, the impact he’s had on the team becomes evident. Marcos completed 79 passes against Valencia, 45 against Huesca and 72 against Vallecano, a total of 196 with an accuracy of 94%. This clearly shows his talent of being able to start attacks – he is always willing to get moves going, constantly giving his teammates a passing option.

In comparison with the rest of his colleagues, Llorente is the Madridista with the highest percentage of completed passes, beating Ceballos (93%) and Ramos (92%). This proves Llorente’s capacity to direct the team’s attacks from deep: he is always ready to play the ball out from the back and is offering himself to receive passes from teammates. On top of this, no one has a better success rate from long passes, where he has a 92% success rate.

In defence, he can be judged by his recovery of the ball statistics. Despite having only played 295 minutes in LaLiga Santander 2018/19, Marcos is the Real Madrid player with the most defensive actions recorded per game (14.4) and he has the best ratio of recoveries to losses at 5.1% per game.  

Getting game time at Real Madrid has never been easy for anyone, with competition fierce due to the sheer quality of the members of the squad. Despite this Llorente has taken on the challenge of coming back to Real Madrid, and when given the opportunity has shown that he’s more than capable of nailing down a starting spot at the club.

Marcos Llorente is ready – it’s now down to Santiago Solari to keep picking him.

© LALIGA - 2018