Denzel Dumfries can look back on a mixed debut for Real Madrid. The Dutch right-back drew both praise and criticism in the Spanish media after the LaLiga match against Espanyol (1-2 win).<\/p>\n
Carlo Ancelotti started Dumfries on Saturday evening ahead of Trent Alexander-Arnold, who came on after 79 minutes.<\/p>\n
Real Madrid made a strong start to the season. Jude Bellingham put them ahead after just nine minutes, heading in from an indirect free-kick.<\/p>\n
Half an hour in, though, Espanyol were level again. Alex Cala finished off a long move and blasted the ball high past Thibaut Courtois.<\/p>\n
Then came the winner in the final minute. Carlos Espi collected the ball in the opposition penalty area, dribbled past the goalkeeper and found the net.<\/p>\n
Dumfries was on the pitch for almost 80 minutes and earned some praise, though the former PSV and sc Heerenveen player also came in for criticism.<\/p>\n
MARCA liked plenty of what it saw. “Very good in the way he defended on the front foot. He made good use of his strength,” it wrote. “In the second half he produced a magnificent defensive action.” MARCA gives him a 6.<\/p>\n
El Desmarque took a dimmer view. “He gave Javi Hernandez too much space for the 1-1, but apart from that he was very involved with his trademark attacking play. A 5.”<\/p>\n
Mundo Deportivo also blamed Dumfries for the goal Real conceded. “Was very involved going forward, but as a result was too late for Espanyol’s equaliser.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denzel Dumfries can look back on a mixed debut for Real Madrid. The Dutch right-back drew both praise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,43876,434310,596,41288,22455,85],"class_list":["post-865751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-espanyol","tag-espanyol-vs-real-madrid","tag-football","tag-laliga","tag-real-madrid","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}