Two players under the Real Madrid umbrella — Reinier Jesus, Miguel Gutierrez — featured in Friday night’s La Liga game between Girona and Celta Vigo at Montilivi stadium tonight. Miguel started the game as the team’s left wing-back, while Reinier Jesus entered the field off the bench in the 59th minute for Oscar Ureña.

Miguel Gutierrez

Miguel had the task of dealing with Carles Perez on the flank, as well as overloads from the physical and aggressive Hugo Mallo (who Vinicius politely cooked a week ago at Balaidos).

Defensively, Miguel put in, generally, a solid shift — and he did well dealing with both of those players on Celta’s right flank when it came to 1v1 duels. He is good when squared up to defend, but struggles moreso with his positioning tracking runners behind him — something that Girona’s 3-1-4-2 is equipped to mask to an extent.

Celta pressed high, so we didn’t get to see the young left-back get into the final third much, but he did well to escape pressure and also distribute balls vertically. Girona looked to get him the ball so that he could hit balls into the box for Christian Stuani.

Miguel, who was subbed off after 81 minutes for Javi Hernandez, had 57 touches, one wayward shot with the outside of his left foot, one key pass, three tackles, three clearances, and completed 86.1% of his passes.

Reinier Jesus

As noted above, Real Madrid loanee Reinier Jesus entered the field as a sub for the second consecutive game, and wasn’t nearly as active as he was in the La Liga opener vs Getafe (which Matt Wiltse and I broke down here).

Tonight, Reinier did nearly score with his first touch after arriving at the top of the box to hit a rebound — but his shot went over the bar, and had it gone in, it would’ve been pulled back due to an offside in the play anyway.

Reinier, who operates as a roaming 10, had 19 touches (3 of them resulting in possession loss) and successfully completed all of his 12 passes.