Real Madrid have had a roller-coaster ride last season. The club had a disastrous domestic campaign as they were ignominiously knocked out of the Copa Del Rey by minnows Leganes and similarly, failed to put up a good show for the La Liga title, which they eventually lost to their arch-rivals, Barcelona.
On the bright side, however, Los Blancos ended the season on a high note by triumphing over Liverpool to clinch their third successive UEFA Champions League trophy (three-peat), fourth in the last five years. Nevertheless, the sensational win was not enough to mask the contretemps the club underwent this season.
With the transfer market in full swing, Florentino Pérez will patiently seek to bolster his squad for the forthcoming campaign in order to evade the fury of the fans.
One area where the Spanish tycoon needs to show special interest is the attack. In the early part of the 2017-18 season, Real Madrid’s attacking unit was clearly not up to snuff which resulted in the loss of consequential points. With Gareth Bale’s and Cristiano Ronaldo’s future still up in the air, here are 5 superstars who can put an end to Real Madrid’s offensive troubles.
5 Eden Hazard
Yes, Chelsea is a huge club but let’s face it, The Pensioners do not deserve Eden Hazard. Or let’s put it this way, Eden Hazard does not deserve a club as erratic as Chelsea. After all, it’s surprising, to say the least, that the supremely talented Belgian is still at a club which finished 5th in Premier League, won’t play Champions League next season, has got financial problems and numerous other worries.
And this is not ME mentioning all this! Even Hazard himself stated that his future at Stamford Bridge pivots on The Blues’ activity in the transfer market which has been all but zilch thus far. As such, the 27-year-old is expected to make a move away from his current club and the ideal option would be to join Real Madrid.
4 Neymar
Needless to say, Neymar is one of the most gifted players present on the planet Earth – and his eye-watering transfer from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain in the last summer transfer window is a testament to that claim. In the 2017-18 season, he scored 28 goals in 30 appearances for PSG and the stats could have been even more impressive if it had not been for a fractured metatarsal in early March. All the same, Neymar has somehow faded into obscurity post his move to the French league as there’s no escaping the widely-held belief that Ligue 1 is a league ‘full of farmers’ and therefore anything achieved in France lacks credibility.
3 Robert Lewandowski
It’s true that the Polish striker had an utterly underwhelming World Cup campaign but there’s no denying that Lewandowski is still one of the most menacing center-forwards in the modern game of football. The 29-year-old has been the linchpin of the Bayern Munich squad since his move from Borussia Dortmund in 2014, inspiring them to 4 consecutive Bundesliga titles.
2 Mohamed Salah
Yes, Egypt had an unimpressive run in the World Cup 2018 but it would be criminal to hold Salah even partly responsible for that. At the end of the day, he was only present in the last two matches where he scored the only 2 goals for the national side. The reason he is on the list is his one-for-the-books performance in the recently-concluded season for The Reds. Not even the most optimistic of Liverpool fans could have predicted the impact Salah has made since arriving from AS Roma for £37.8m in June 2017.
1 Kylian Mbappe
As things stand, Mbappe appears to be the ultimate backstop for Real Madrid’s attacking woes. Not only was he excellent for PSG after arriving for €180 million last summer but he also cemented his position in the national team after a peach of a performance against Argentina, where he scored two goals and also won a penalty for his team.