Real Madrid's Lack of Goals Highlighted by Complete Absence From List of Top 20 La Liga Scorers

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90 Min
Publish date:
Oct 16, 2017

Cristiano Ronaldo finally got off the mark in La Liga at the weekend, with his strike against Getafe on Saturday his first goal of the season.

Suspended at the start of the campaign for a push on the referee in the first leg of the Spanish Super Cup in August, Ronaldo had failed to score in three La Liga appearances upon his return. For most others, it wouldn't have been headline worthy, but for Ronaldo it was huge news.

But even though the Ballon d'Or holder has opened his personal La Liga account for the season, Real as a team are scoring surprisingly few goals.

They have scored 15 times in eight games, way short of Barcelona's tally of 24. Valencia (21), Real Betis (19) and Real Sociedad (17) have all scored more as well.

Los Blancos even saw their incredible run of scoring in consecutive games, which dated back to April 2016 and a Champions League semi-final against Manchester City, come to an end when they faced Betis in a 1-0 defeat on 20th September.

What the relative lack of goals means is that of the 20 top scoring players in La Liga after eight games of the 2017/18 season, not a single one is from Real Madrid.

Barcelona superstar Lionel Messi leads the way in the scoring charts with his 11 goals. Valencia forward and ex-West Ham flop Simone Zaza is next with seven, alongside Villarreal's Cedric Bakambu, who also has seven goals to his name.

Antonio Sanabria, Maxi Gomez and Rodrigo Moreno from Real Betis, Celta Vigo and Valencia respectively have each scored five times in La Liga this season. As many as 13 others, including Aritz Aduriz, Joaquin, Juanmi and Yannick Carrasco have scored at least three.

No Real Madrid player is yet to score more than twice in La Liga in 2017/18. That tally has been achieved by Dani Ceballos, Isco, Gareth Bale and Marco Asensio. Along with Ronaldo, Casemiro, Karim Benzema, Borja Mayoral, Lucas Vazquez and Toni Kroos have scored once.

Real have scored at least 102 times in 38 games in every league season since 2009, even netting an unbelievable 121 in 2011/12. Zinedine Zidane's team is averaging less than two goals per game - at the current rate, they'd be on course to finish the season with 71 league goals.