It’s the holiday break and every team in LaLiga has played at least 17 games, with a few clubs already at the literal mid-way point on 19 matches played. So now is as good of a time as any to start handing out mid-season awards to Real Madrid.
Currently, the Merengues sit second in the table, but it is a new rival, Atletico Madrid, who are a point ahead after shocking Barcelona 2-1 with a last-gasp victory last weekend.
Both Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid have a game in hand on Barcelona, too. So while Real are still in a heated title race against formidable opponents, the fact that they are ahead of Barca now despite losing 4-0 to the Blaugrana and having a myriad of injury concerns bodes well for the second half of the season if stars like Kylian Mbappe can continue to step up.
Here are some mid-season awards specific to Real Madrid after 18 matches played.
Best Defender
Even though he’s currently injured with a torn ACL, I still have to give the nod of the best defender to Real’s actual best defender, Eder Militao, who did start 11 games before going down with an ACL tear for a second straight season.
Real Madrid can only pray that Militao is still as good as ever despite two major knee injuries, because he has a legitimate case for being the best center back on the planet.
The team is demonstrably worse – far worse, at that – in defense without Militao marshaling strikers, recovering for teammates, covering the right back position in transitions when necessary, heading danger like a warrior, snapping into challenges, and even facilitating effective playmaking from deep.
Best Midfielder
Fede Valverde and Jude Bellingham are pretty much neck-and-neck for this award, but because Jude functions so much as an attacking player for Real Madrid, I’m going to give Fede the edge here as a midfield presence. (Plus, Jude is going to come up later.)
At the start of the season before Vinicius Junior and Bellingham started heating up, Fede was actually Madrid’s best player, and he’s continued to carry that game-changing ability with two important and ridiculous long-range goals against Rayo Vallecano and Sevilla in the final matches before the holiday break.
Valverde is completing 90 percent of his passes and his defensive numbers are truly outrageous; they would make even an elite center back like Virgil van Djik’s eyes water.
Fede is averaging 1.5 tackles and 1.9 interceptions per game with just 0.3 dribbles completed allowed, and that is shutdown defense at its finest. Invoking Van Dijk, the Liverpool superstar is averaging 1.1 tackles and 1.9 interceptions per game with 0.3 dribbles allowed, so, statistically, Valverde as a midfielder is an even better shutdown defender than Van Dijk at center back. Outrageous.
To do all of that with five goals, as many as star forward Rodrygo Goes, and a healthy 1.2 key passes per game is just obscene, and I hope Fede one day gets some real Ballon d’Or love because he’s as good as any of his teammates right now.
Best Forward
Kylian Mbappe is Madrid’s first player to 10 goals and has been better than his media portrayal, with a turnaround definitely on the horizon after his best game yet against Sevilla before the break.
But there is no question that the best attacking player on Real Madrid is Vinicius Jr., whose all-around impact on the left wing exceeds any other player in world football’s.
Vini Jr. wreaks havoc on defenses with his progression, chance creation, and, now, finishing. He has scored 8 goals with 5 assists this season, averaging 3.0 fouls drawn, 2.8 dribbles completed, and 2.1 key passes per game.
The competition from the Premier League for the Ballon d’Or will be just as stiff this season in light of what Mohamed Salah is doing for Liverpool, who have been the best team in Europe so far in 2024/25 – and embarrassed Real Madrid to prove it.
But they embarrassed a Real Madrid playing without Vinicius Jr., and although the Merengues showed they may be less reliant on the Brazilian than previously with an effective Mbappe rocking Sevilla last Sunday, even a fool will tell you that Real Madrid is simply not Real Madrid without Vinicius Jr. roaming the flank.
Best Backup
The best backup award goes to the best player with more bench appearances than starts, and although Arda Guler and Brahim Diaz both have worthwhile cases for this honor, the winner has to be the ageless wonder Luka Modric.
He’s effective both as a starter or a backup, but there’s no question that at this stage of his career, he has accepted his transition into being more of a secondary option to the likes of Fede Valverde and Eduardo Camavinga as a box-to-box midfielder. Lately, Dani Ceballos has been getting more opportunities, too, such as against Sevilla.
But Modric is still highly effective. He has three assists as a No. 8 this season with 72 completed passes, 1.7 combined tackles and interceptions, and 2.3 key passes per 90 minutes.
He’s one of the best playmakers in LaLiga when you adjust his statistics, and although Real can’t fully transition him to a playmaking role, the 39-year-old can offer a key additional source of chance creation late in games or critical stabilization on Champions League nights.
Even at his age, he offers more than enough running and progression, and he is an overall asset to the team’s defensive efforts.
Biggest Surprise
Raul Asencio has stepped in to the center back position at the age of 21 with no prior starting experience for Real Madrid, and he’s been operating at a higher level defensively than any other current starter on the team,
That makes Carlo Ancelotti’s desire to turn him into a right back to back up Lucas Vazquez all the more frustrating, because he is clearly a superior option to makeshift midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni, who is giving up a goal per game lately on pure defensive blunders, and has even been more assured than veteran Antonio Rudiger.
Raul can be the future of the Real Madrid defense and is the exact kind of academy godsend the Merengues were hoping for in the preseason when Joan Martinez was added to the first team before an ACL tear.
Most Improved
An afterthought for much of his Real Madrid career, Dani Ceballos came out of nowhere to become the new X-Factor in midfield alongside Eduardo Camavinga down the stretch of the 2021/22 season when Carlo Ancelotti needed him the most, becoming a key source of energy in both the victorious Champions League and LaLiga campaigns.
After Real Madrid brought in Aurelien Tchouameni and Jude Bellingham, Ceballos’ importance waned to the point where his starts went from 19 in the 2022/23 season to just 5 in the 2023/24 campaign, and after saving his Madrid career in 2022, he was back on the chopping block last season.
But Ceballos stayed, and, now, Carlo and Madridistas are glad he did. Ceballos has emerged over the past few weeks as a superior midfield option to Tchouameni and even Modric, so when Ancelotti eventually gets his wits about him and moves Tchou back to the midfield from center back, I’m not so sure the Frenchman gets his job back.
Ceballos was solid against Sevilla, his old rivals as a Betico, and it doesn’t look like the 28-year-old is going to be leaving Real Madrid next summer either. He is one of the best box-to-box midfielders in LaLiga and is legitimately in his prime.
Best Young Player
I define a young player as anyone under the age of 23, and since Endrick hasn’t been able to do much with so many quality attackers, the field is pretty narrow with Brahim Diaz, Arda Guler, and Raul Asencio as the only U23 options to challenge Jude Bellingham.
So the honor has to go to Bellingham, who was the LaLiga Player of the Season in 2023/24 and has been just as good lately after a bit of a slow start to the 2024/25 campaign.
Bellingham has 6 goals and 4 assists this season with more key defensive contributions, and he had scored a goal in each of his previous six games before playing a more balanced role against Sevilla.
Willing to do the dirty work, Bellingham is a great leader and a highly intelligent player off the ball, and the smear campaign against him from the British media this past summer has proven to be a strong indictment of the incompetence of that country’s football coverage rather than any statement against Bellingham as a man. Because he is more of a man than any of those backstabbing, gossiping imbeciles will ever be.
Best Overall Player
Vinicius Jr. I already spoke about him above, so I won’t belabor the point here. But on a team of superstars with a handful of players who could legitimately build a Player of the Season case in LaLiga, Vini Jr. stands out among them.
He is nigh uncatchable with the ball at his feet, exploding past defenders in the middle third before bobbing and weaving his way through them in the attacking third.
With experience, his decision-making has become nearly flawless, as the Brazilian superstar now has a keen understanding of when it lay it off, when it send in the low cross, when to trivela it into the corridor of uncertainty, when to let it rip at the near post, or when to send his now trademark curler dancing into the far corner of the net.
He is the best of the best and the biggest game-changer in world football, shining at his brightest when the whole world is on his back and the spotlight is blinding everyone else – even his exceptional teammates.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. You can contact him at kparvizi19[at]gmail.com.