Player Ratings: PSG 4 - 0 Real Madrid Femenino

Real Madrid suffered a big 4-0 loss to PSG in the UEFA Women’s Champions League. Check out Grant Little’s immediate reaction for a more thorough discussion of the match. Continue reading for the player ratings.

Starting XI

GK: Méline Gérard — 5.5/10

Hard to pin too much of this result on Gérard. Nevertheless, while she made a number of decent saves, she gambled coming off her line on the first goal, leaving the net wide open, and failed to communicate with Rocío on PSG’s fourth.

RWB: Kenti Robles — 5/10

Kenti suffered more than most today. She rarely had chances to make her trademark runs forward and was instead pinned back for 90 minutes, struggling to defend the devilishly-tricky duo of Sakina Karchaoui and Sandy Baltimore.

RCB: Claudia Florentino — 4/10

Florentino was not signed with the expectation that she would feature in these types of matches, but she had to step up to the plate with Babett Peter out injured. It was all a bit much for her, as she lost out vs. dribblers more than once and had a tough time tracking runs in behind her back.

CB: Rocío Gálvez — 4.5/10

Rocío generally protected the box well but came up short on key occasions, such as when she couldn’t get stay with Marie-Antoinette Katoto’s run on the first goal, failed to properly contest the same opponent in the air on PSG’s third, and committed an unnecessary own goal 11 minutes later.

LCB: Ivana Andrés — 6.5/10

Ivana is probably the only defender that came out looking halfway decent against the ball. She snuffed out passes into the channels time and time again and prevented the scoreline from being even worse.

LWB/RCB: Lucía Rodríguez — 6/10

Lucía didn’t make many obvious mistakes defensively and had some moments carrying possession into higher areas. At the end of the day, she was put in a role where her influence was limited and had to see out proceedings as a right center-back following David Aznar’s final set of subs.

CM: Claudia Zornoza — 5/10

A nightmare game for a central midfielder; shuttle from side-to-side for a full match and get swarmed as soon as you try to string something together in possession. Zornoza simply wasn’t put in an environment to make an impact.

CM: Maite Oroz — 5.5/10

Maite conjured up Madrid’s one magical moment of the match with a sick disguised pass around the 38th minute. It completely caught PSG’s midfield out and hinted at the possibilities if Las Blancas could get into advanced areas more regularly. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and I’m sure Maite’s enduring memory of this loss will be the clumsy mistake she made in her own box, which directed a low cross straight to Sara Däbritz to make it 2-0 in the first half, rather than one cool piece of skill.

RM: Marta Corredera — 5/10

Although Corredera was decent on the ball, she was far too limited offensively to give Madrid the desperate relief they needed on the counter-attack. Aznar probably started her for defense, which didn’t produce the intended consequences. Corredera failed to offer Kenti and Claudia F. significant help and was caught napping on an early set-piece that signaled the PSG dominance that was to come.

LM/RM: Athenea del Castillo — 5/10

Athenea really tried to make stuff happen for her team. She drove at players at every moment and defended with a fiery intensity. However, she simply couldn’t get the better of Ashley Lawrence and was left visibly frustrated at the lack of attacking support.

ST: Esther González — 4.5/10

Esther cut the most isolated figure out of anyone in the eleven. There’s nothing much to say about her performance aside from a few moments where she attempted to hold up play.

Substitutes

ST: Nahikari García (replaced Esther; 60’) — 5.5/10

Nahikari managed to fire off a long-range shot and probably saw more of the ball than Esther due to game-state effects and PSG relaxing a tad in the second half.

CM: Teresa Abelleira (replaced Maite; 60’) — 5/10

It was the same story for Teresa as it was for Maite and Zornoza.

LM/LWB: Olga Carmona (replaced Corredera; 65’) — 5.5/10

Olga immediately provided Madrid with the width and attacking intent necessary to push PSG back and find avenues towards goal, but it was too little too late.

LS: Caroline Møller Hansen (replaced Zornoza; 77’) — 6/10

Hansen’s arrival coincided with a shift to a 3-4-3 shape that brought Claudia F. into midfield, pushed Olga down to LWB, and situated Lucía at RCB. This gave Madrid a tad more juice and Møller manufactured Madrid’s best shot of the game from a tight angle in the left-hand side of the box.

RS: Lorena Navarro (replaced Athenea; 77’) — 5/10

Tried to receive between the lines and link play intelligently, as she always does.