If you hadn’t heard of Garcia prior to the Club World Cup, you will have now.<\/p>\n
The young Madrid forward has led the line in the absence of Kylian Mbappe – who made his comeback from gastroentiritis against Juventus – and has taken his chance with both hands.<\/p>\n
With three goals in four games, Garcia is Los Blancos’ top scorer at the tournament and is behind only Benfica’s Angel di Maria in the overall standings.<\/p>\n
Aside from a one-year spell away from the Spanish capital with Mallorca in 2018-19, the 21-year-old has been part of the Madrid set-up since the age of 10.<\/p>\n
He rose through the ranks and made his first appearance with Madrid’s B team, Castilla, in March 2022.<\/p>\n
The Spanish forward made his first-team debut in the November of that year but was still predominantly playing with Castilla, eventually scoring his first senior goal in the Copa del Rey quarter-finals against Leganes in February 2025.<\/p>\n
After Real’s 3-0 victory over Salzburg, in which Garcia scored his second goal at the tournament, Alonso likened his attributes to that of the legendary Raul Gonzalez.<\/p>\n
“What he’s doing isn’t a surprise. He’s done it many times at Castilla,” he said.<\/p>\n
“He’s the typical number nine, who knows how to wait for his opportunity, who moves well.<\/p>\n
“He has Raul qualities in his movements. There are no decisions regarding the start of next season.”<\/p>\n
Mikel believes Garcia has earned his chance to start, even with Mbappe’s return to fitness.<\/p>\n
“Who needs Mbappe when you have Garcia?” Mikel told Dazn.<\/p>\n
“I’m pushing for the young lad, he has been on fire. This is what we love to see – young players getting opportunities.”<\/p>\n
Spanish football expert Guillem Balague, added: “In December 2024, Rahul \u2013 then manager of Real Madrid B \u2013 said Garcia should be in the first team. He was part of the youth team that won the treble in 2022\/23. He was playing as a nine but also can play as a left winger.<\/p>\n
“Real have been looking for a forward, someone who accepts his role behind Mbappe. Now they have got that nine through the ranks, Alonso has got a lot of confidence in him.<\/p>\n
“He was the third top scorer in Real Madrid B history, arrived at Real Madrid when he was 10 and now he is a first teamer.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you hadn’t heard of Garcia prior to the Club World Cup, you will have now. The young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4100],"tags":[94,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-231261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114782145472811144","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}