Borja Mayoral enters the last year of his contract with Real Madrid without being very clear about what his future is going to be. He has spent the last four seasons on loan, two at Levante, one and a half at Roma and a half at Getafe, and this summer what will probably be his last train to settle at Real Madrid, the team from his life, the one that made him grow as a youth player and with which he won the 2017-18 Champions League, being part of the white squad that year. But there is something that Mayoral knows: he does not want to wait until the end of the market to find out where he will play in 2022-23. The one from Parla doesn’t want to wait.
Since his last season at Madrid, that 2017-18, Mayoral’s pace has been irregular, with moments of great drought, but also with moments of great brilliance. It cost him in his first year at Levante (five goals); much more in tune he was in the second (nine). In 2020-21 he exploded in Rome with 17 goals, despite being Edin Dzeko’s theoretical substitute, finishing the course as the capital’s team’s top gunner. The arrival of Mourinho in the summer of 2021 stopped him in his tracks, but he managed to go out on loan to Getafe last January and at the Coliseum he scored six vital goals for the Azulona salvation.
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Four seasons in which Mayoral has shown ease in scoring when given continuity and in which he has continued to stand out for his associative style of play, similar to that of Benzema and, therefore, very much to the liking of Carlo Ancelotti. That is Mayoral’s main hope, that Carletto considers him the best option to give Benzema rest minutes, ahead of Jovic and Mariano, whom the coach has barely used this season. In the white club they align with this thesis, although they give the coach autonomy to decide the hierarchy of his squad. But, if that is going to be Ancelotti’s decision, Mayoral wants to know as soon as possible and not depending on the development of events in the transfer market.
Because the experience of the summer of 2020 was not to the player’s liking: Zidane told him that he had him, but in the first days of the League he clearly opted for Jovic instead, which led Parla’s man to look for a hasty exit; Luckily for him, Roma appeared to offer him a two-year loan, with a purchase option of 20 million euros that was on its way to being activated after his first campaign there. The ostracism to which Mayoral was banished by Mourinho ruined that option.
Mayoral, Jovic and Mariano
This summer, Mayoral is clear that he wants things to be different. He is 25 years old and has a long professional career, having already played for five different teams, reasons why he considers himself to have the right to know, without depending on other footballers, if he is going to be part of Real Madrid 2022-23. He is waiting for the start of preseason (July 8) to meet Ancelotti and find out, directly from the Italian coach, what plans he has for him. For his part, there are no doubts: he wants to take advantage of this last year of his contract at Real Madrid. This is how he made it clear in statements to ‘Chiringuito’: “I’ll start the preseason and we’ll see what happens. It doesn’t depend on me, but I would like to have a place”.
On the part of the club there will be no opposition; and for Ancelotti’s, it is difficult for Mayoral not to fit something more than Jovic and Mariano, who have not added a thousand minutes between them during the entire course that has just ended. The point is that, at the moment, there are three ‘nines’; For Mayoral to have a hole, one must come out for sure, it would even be convenient for both to come out so that the one from Parla brings together all the minutes that Benzema does not play. Jovic is determined to leave, his representatives are looking for a team for him; Mariano also seems more inclined this summer to leave Madrid. But in both cases the problem is the same: find a team that takes care of a large part of their salaries, which are first class and not within the reach of most clubs.
