What is Jude Bellingham’s best role in the 2024/25 Real Madrid lineup after Kylian Mbappe’s transfer created positive stress for Carlo Ancelotti? Who is Barcelona’s best player of the 2024/25 La Liga season thus far? And who can be Girona’s new star after they lost Savinho and Artem Dovbyk?
Here are key takeaways from around the world of La Liga after a goal-fest of a weekend in the Spanish top flight.
Girona have no more star power
Girona had already agreed to sell their best player, Savinho, to more powerful partner club Manchester City, and then later in the summer transfer window, they waved goodbye to the top goal-scorer in La Liga, Artem Dovbyk.
Although Girona brought in La Liga veterans Arnaut Danjuma and Bryan Gil on the wings as loan acquisitions, their only striker signing of the summer was the unproven Abel Ruiz from SC Braga for just under 10 million euros.
Undoubtedly, Girona still have a talented squad and did make a handful of intriguing summer signings, with former Manchester United midfielder Donny van de Beek and Watford winger Yaser Asprilla – their most expensive addition at 18 million euros – included in that group.
But the problem is that Girona haven’t been able to produce end product, which is why they have gone from darkhorse La Liga contenders and a legitimate Champions League side to 12th in the league table after 10 matches.
Girona have more losses than wins and as many draws as wins. A team in the same position as them – with the same exact record having previously been Champions League regulars – just beat them 1-0, as Real Sociedad handed Girona their third shutout loss in the last six matches.
Michel is a great manager, and Girona still have the likes of Miguel Gutierrez, Daley Blind, and Yangel Herrera ranking as among the best in La Liga at their respective positions. However, none of those are forward positions.
Girona do not have a single player with multiple assists. Their leading goal-scorer is veteran talisman Cristhian Stuani, who, at the age of 38, does not start games; his team-high three goals have come in seven appearances off the bench without a single start.
Other than Stuani, striker Ruiz is the only player with multiple goals, and he’s offered a return of just two goals in nine matches, which is far behind what Dovbyk produced in 2023/24.
It’s not just a goal-scoring problem, though. Viktor Tsygankov’s numbers have dropped sharply with the decline in supporting cast, as he’s not even averaging a dribble completed per game from the wing.
Ruiz hasn’t quite established himself in his new environment despite a few flashes of his Eibar form, while Danjuma has been a total failure beyond a couple of highlight-reel dribbles here and there.
Girona have nobody transcending games like they did last season, and while they would have expected a drop off from Dovbyk and Savinho, it’s been troubling to see nobody step up to the plate – least of all Tsygankov, who had the Premier League’s elite watching him this summer in the hopes of a 2024/25 breakout.
The good news for Girona is that they do have a host of talented young players who could become bigger stars as the season goes on; there is more than enough time to gel, and Girona aren’t in any real jeopardy of relegation.
I would, especially, like to highlight Aprilla and Gabriel Misehouy as two U-21 players worth watching closely as the season goes on. Neither are regular starters – Misehouy does not have a single start – but both have talent, with Asprilla already looking like Girona’s most consistent threat on the ball with 1.6 key passes and 1.6 dribbles completed per 90.
Who is Barcelona’s best player of the 2024/25 La Liga season?
Picking the best player on Barcelona so far in the 2024/25 season is like picking your favorite Brazilian footballer of all time. You firmly believe you can do it easily, but then the more you think about it, the more you realize you can’t choose because you keep convincing yourself of a different option.
Barcelona have been the most exciting team to watch in the world this season, bar none, and that’s honestly the way it should be. This team was built on playing beautiful football, so whenever Barca aren’t the most fun team to watch, you know something’s wrong at the Camp Nou.
So under Hansi Flick, it all feels right for the first time since, really, Neymar left. Barcelona are fluid, expansive, expressive, and, most of all, victorious, leading La Liga over eternal rivals Real Madrid despite the fact that the Merengue club signed arguably the best player and the best prospect in the same transfer window.
But Barcelona are the better-coached team. They put up five more goals to the good this past weekend, turning Sevilla into nothing more than 11 training cones helplessly watching Pedri and Lamine Yamal carve them up.
OK, OK, no more delaying. Lamine Yamal, Robert Lewandowski, and Raphinha are the three favorites. Pedri doesn’t quite have the numbers to compete with the attacking trio, and Dani Olmo hasn’t played enough games, even though he has, at times, looked like the most impactful player on the pitch.
For me, it’s impossible to pick against Yamal. He is the most talented player on Barcelona with his dribbling skills, innate sense of timing, instincts off the ball, and overall chance creation.
Lewandowski and Raphinha have more goal contributions than Yamal, but Yamal has the most assists with six as well as the most dribbles completed (3.0) and fouls drawn (2.5).
I think that’s the hardest thing to do, and it’s something Vinicius Junior, for example, has done well for Real Madrid over the years but clearly not as immediately or even as efficiently as the 17-year-old Yamal.
The Euro 2024 hero is able to score goals and produce assists in the box despite being the main progressor out wide and winner of one-on-ones. He has to do the dirty work to create the initial chance, and yet even with all that hard work, he still has the energy, ability, and even wherewithall to rival the others in the goals and assists department.
What is Jude’s best role for Real Madrid with Mbappe integrated?
I’m sure the average fan is gleefully delighting in the fact that Jude Bellingham isn’t anywhere near his 2023/24 season pace, when he was by far the best player in the world at this point in the calendar last season with the most goals in La Liga.
Now, Bellingham has not scored a single goal, and he’s registered just one assist. Carlo Ancelotti has frustrated Real Madrid fans by move Bellingham all over the pitch from the 8 to the 10 to a weird hybrid right wing forward position.
Bellingham has been pulled further away from goal, and so, again, the average Real Madrid despiser is looking at the basic box score stats and making the usual inane commentary about a player who scored 19 goals from midfield as a 20-year-old in his first season at the Santiago Bernabeu being overrated.
The reality is that Bellingham is Real’s best all-around player, and it isn’t close if people were to put their love for Vinicius Junior aside for a second. Bellingham is legitimately world-class at scoring goals, creating chances, keeping possession, progressing play, winning possession, marking, pressing, and timing his runs.
Jude is the definition of that idiotic WhoScored line “Player has no significant weaknesses”, because he just might be one of the only two players in world football for whom that line could conceivably be true (the other is his own teammate, Fede Valverde).
What Ancelotti needs to do – and what it sounds like he will do, based on reporting from MARCA’s chief scribe Jose Felix Diaz – is move Bellingham back to the 10 position for a very simple reason.
Yes, Jude can excel in a No. 8 role or that weird, hare-brained right wing shuttling role that Fede used to play when he was younger because there was 1) Nowhere else to put him and 2) He wasn’t quite developed yet technically.
But why would you take a potential 20-goal midfielder who can create multiple chances per game and dribble like a Zinedine Zidane lite regen in any position away from the other team’s goal?
It made no sense, it was bad coaching, and if you are going to sacrifice anyone in this lineup, don’t sacrifice the guy who was, statistically speaking, the best performing player in world football from the start of the 2023/24 season to the finish.
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. His work has been featured in ESPN, Bleacher Report, Yahoo! Sports, NBC Sports, and other major outlets. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.