La Liga: While others grab headlines, Ruud van Nistelrooy has done his talking on the field and is by far his team's most important player, writes Sid Lowe.

A sharp intake of breath accompanied David Beckham's hobbling return to Spain from England duty this week. As he emerged for training at Real Madrid's Valdebebas HQ yesterday, heavy strapping on his twisted ankle, the fear was palpable.

Tonight, Madrid face Real Zaragoza in the most important match the club has played in three years. Win and they will be a solitary victory away from a first trophy since 2003 and a chance to end their longest drought in half a century; draw or lose and the league will probably slip from their grasp. They can ill afford to be without the man who has provided key assists in the five matches he has played since returning from a month's ostracism and six weeks' injury.

Beckham travelled with the squad and should make it. Besides, amid the excitement over this latest footballing resurrection, it has been too easy to overlook another former Manchester United player quietly going about his work with devastating effectiveness - a player who, even more than Beckham, Madrid cannot afford to miss at the Romareda tonight.

"I know this might be a stupid question," began the query on one Madrid television channel this week, "but who's Madrid's player of the year?" The panellists nodded in agreement - it was a stupid question. There can be only one candidate and it is not David Beckham. It is, rather, Rutgerus Johannes Martinius van Nistelrooij. If there is a fundamental player in the Madrid side, in the Spanish league even, it is he.

Ruud van Nistelrooy has played more minutes than any other outfield player in the Madrid squad and it is no coincidence they failed to win the two games he did not start. He has scored 31 goals, 23 of them in the league, leaving him two ahead of La Liga's second-top scorer, Sevilla's Fredi Kanoute, who will miss out against Mallorca this weekend through injury. And he is three behind Roma's Francesco Totti in the race for the Golden Boot - even if he insists he is "not even thinking" about that prize.

He alone has accounted for over a third of Madrid's league goals, their second-top scorer, Raul, having hit only seven, and has contributed more points to his team's league challenge than any player at any club. And he has done it the hard way. The Dutchman arrived in Madrid a 30-year-old in the shadow of Ronaldo.

Willing but unspectacular, initially he won over few fans in a stadium that values the aesthetic as much as the effective. It did not help that almost all his goals came away. With Ronaldo departing to Milan, a martyr at the hands of Fabio Capello's "anti-football", Van Nistelrooy was seen as an honest pro but a symbol of the Italian manager's boring football.

But, given time, Van Nistelrooy provided incontrovertible proof of his superiority in the form of goals - lots of them. Right foot, left foot, headers - he has scored them all. At last he has even hit the net from outside the area.

"He has it all," says Carlos Santillana, the second-highest scorer in the club's history. "He's good with both feet, strong and technical. He's the nearest thing there is to an old-fashioned number nine."

While Ronaldo promised 30 goals, Van Nistelrooy said nothing and got on with getting them. The Brazilian scored once in seven starts before moving - Van Nistelrooy reached his 30-goal target instead. A goal against Zaragoza and he will equal the record of club legend Hugo Sanchez.

"Van Nistelrooy is a dying breed," the Mexican said.

"Ruud has been fantastic," added Capello. "Few strikers have his instinct in front of goal."

What makes Van Nistelrooy's record even more remarkable is that, until Madrid's recent renaissance, it was all his own work. Isolated and unassisted, he has had fewer shots per goal than any striker in Europe; over the last three months he is running at a goal every 2.3 attempts. This has been no feast. "In biological terms he has gone from the jungle to the desert," Diego Torres wrote in El Pais. "He no longer gorges on mangoes, but somehow he's getting by on insects."

Time and again he kept Madrid alive almost single-handedly. Now, amazingly, they are within reach of the title. But, warns Van Nistelrooy, there are still two games to go.

"I didn't expect to have such a good season," the Dutchman admitted. "When you go to a new country, it's hard. But for me it was also a chance for a fresh start, to wipe the slate clean. I'm pleased, but you can't truly evaluate things until the end of the season. It will all mean nothing if we don't win the next two matches."