In the last eight games, eight injuries in Madrid, a team very punctual in the concatenation of physical misfortunes. Tchouameni, Militão (crusader fracture), Rodrygo, Lucas Vázquez, Vinicius, Camavinga, Mendy and, this Tuesday, Mbappé in Bergamo have been those who have fallen in this period. Almost a starting eleven. Since the preseason in the United States, the locker room has accumulated no less than 15 muscle injuries and two broken knees. It ends before mentioning the players who have not undergone the medical report: Fran García, Valverde, Rüdiger, Modric, Güler, Endrick and Lunin. This Thursday it will be known to what extent the French star’s problems in the back of his left thigh extend. A landscape of hardships combined with a scorching calendar that, for Carlo Ancelotti, only leaves room for resistance.
The white team has been walking through a minefield since August. First because of his laziness in starting the engines and then because of a carousel of medical problems in a template with cracks in the planning. The team has been making the rubber for weeks, like a cyclist who twists at every turn, but without letting go of anything. In the League they have benefited from Barcelona’s doubts and in Europe they revived themselves against Atalanta, who had gone 14 games unbeaten. Carlo Ancelotti’s confessed relief when he left the Gewiss Stadium revealed the alertness with which he traveled to northern Italy due to the precarious qualifying situation in the Champions League.
But in the middle of this thorny path, the coach has found a foothold. “Since the game against Osasuna [9 de noviembre]”The team has had more commitment and works harder,” he said in Bergamo. In the days prior to that match, which took place under the effects of the defeats against Barça and Milan, tension rose around the team and Carletto called on the squad to turn Valdebebas’ conversations into reality so that Madrid would adjust, to end, the defensive device. “After words, we must act. I am convinced that we are going to do what we have talked about. But I have doubts,” he said in a press conference that was very symbolic of what had been happening since his complaint at the league premiere in Mallorca. “We had to do it with more attitude,” he lamented then in Son Moix.
Vallecas, Doha and Seville
Madrid accumulated two defeats in the last two weeks, in Liverpool and Bilbao, in which they showed themselves as a team with limitations; However, Ancelotti perceived signs of life. “We never gave the feeling that the team was lost,” he defended on Tuesday after evaluating the fight of his players, especially since Atalanta went 2-3.
One piece of information proved him right. For the first time in this Champions League, Madrid ran more than its rival: Atalanta 113.4 kilometers compared to Madrid’s 114.1, according to UEFA records. The difference is small, but it is far from the figures of the five previous rounds of the league. Stuttgart did 8.2 kilometers more than the whites; Lille, 10.9; Dortmund, 4.3; Milan, 5.3; and Liverpool, 5. The buzz about this issue reached the locker room and, according to a source with access to the booth, it has been one of the reasons for the team’s click in the last month.
The whites have clung to their classic resistance since the beginning of November and Carletto left Bergamo asking the players for 10 more days with the ranks tight to minimize damage. “You have to hold on until Christmas, it’s the key moment. If we get there alive, the second part of the season will go well because we will begin to recover players,” argued the Reggiolo coach. On Saturday they go to Vallecas, on Wednesday they play the Intercontinental final in Doha (their rival will be between Pachuca, who defeated Botafogo 0-3, and Al-Ahly), and they will close 2024 at home against Sevilla.
His schedule does not ease in January, but he hopes to have more healthy players. “There will be more competition and I will be able to rotate more. But I will always put the best team possible,” he said in Italy.
