There's nothing on really when Aurelien Tchouameni gets the ball from Luka Modric just past the halfway line. With the big Champions League semifinal vs Bayern coming up later in the week, Carlo Ancelotti has rested quite a few of the big names and it's showing. In the opening 28 minutes, Real Sociedad have been on top, and the Anoeta is buzzing: this feels like the kind of night where they show the big boys just how tough La Real are. A minute before Tchouameni gets the ball, in fact, Benat Turrientes has fizzed one just over the Madrid goal -- it had been all one-way traffic.
Then Tchouameni decides to open the game up.
Played as a centre-back on more than one occasion this season, Tchouameni had been struggling in midfield, playing the Toni Kroos role, before he remembers just how good he is. With a Kroosian nonchalance, he plays a sweeping diagonal out to Dani Carvajal that turns nothingness into full-on attack, making it look as easy as flicking on a switch. The Madrid right back runs onto it, and with underrated skill, places a first time pass across the face of goal on the volley. The ball runs through to the far post area, where it evades Igor Zubeldia, and reaches 19-year-old Arda Guler.
This was Guler's first start ever for Madrid, and it'd be natural to be nervous. He'd signed in July after a much hyped two years at boyhood club Fenerbahce (where he became their youngest top division scorer in his first year, and was MOTM in the final as they lifted the 2023 Turkish Cup in his second), but had missed large swathes of action this season. After an impressive pre-season, he missed the opening period with meniscus damage before two muscle injuries kept him out of action till November. Then came an even more frustrating period as he was left out of the squad, the coaching staff seemingly unsure of his readiness. A La Liga debut came in late January but that lasted all of nine minutes. A first goal came in his one-minute sub appearance against Celta Vigo early in March.
In his first start, he'd been thrown in at the deep end: in a hostile Anoeta, he'd been hassled and harried by the Basque side, and nothing had been going his way -- including a decision in the 15th minute when he was dispossessed with a degree of physicality he thought was foul-worthy. The ref disagreed, Guler dissented, and he'd received his first yellow card as a Madrid player. This season really was turning out to be a tough indoctrination into life at Real Madrid.
So it would have been easy for him to snatch at the ball as Carvajal's pass rolled onto his feet. To get frazzled by Zubeldia's panicky attempts to win the ball. To smash it over the bar or hit the imposing figure of Alex Remiro in goal. Except this is Arda Guler, proper prodigy, and frazzled he does not get in front of goal.
Arda Guler's goal from the stands ������ pic.twitter.com/V6OYCOhClh
- Dr Yash (@YashRMFC) April 26, 2024
Running onto it perfectly, Guler side foots it calmly through the legs of Remiro. As finishes go it isn't the most spectacular, but his calmness is remarkable and the finish unerring. First start, first goal. First shot on target for Madrid, and the lead was theirs.
It was a lead they didn't relinquish. Madrid are now four points away from sealing La Liga, and they have four games to do it in. And now they have more from Guler to look forward to. Ancelotti had promised the press (and Guler) last week that the young Turk would "get the minutes he wants", and here he was giving it to him. "Arda will be a very important player for us in the future," the coach said after the match. "There's no doubt he stays with us next year. He has extraordinary quality and a great gift, which is his talent."
For delivering on that great gift of a talent on his full debut for Real Madrid, Arda Guler takes our Moment of the Weekend.