Injuries punish Real Madrid and are particularly hard on the defensive line. Ancelotti, who already had to leave Alaba in Madrid due to a right soleus injury, had to replace two of his defenders in the semifinal: Militao and Lucas Vázquez. The Brazilian thing was dizzy as a result of a ball he received in the second half, but the side thing is going to last over time. The Galician suffers a sprained right ankle that could keep him out for around a month and a half. A setback that is going to demand the most from Carvajal in the coming weeks, in a stretch of the season in which Madrid is going to play two titles (the Spanish Super Cup and the Club World Cup) and their options in the three competitions of long run (the Champions League, the League and the Cup).
Lucas Vázquez’s injury (whose conversion to right-back was consummated with the youth squad’s absence) could become an opportunity for Carvajal to consolidate his ownership (and achieve the continuity that he has not had in the last season and a half since he came out of his injury ordeal) or pose a problem for Ancelotti, whose third way he experimented with in Vila-real (with Militao on the right-handed side) it was not convincing.
The one from Leganés, who turned 31 on the day of the semifinal, He experienced a real ordeal with injuries in 2020-21. A campaign in which he was out for more than 150 days and in which he was only able to participate in 15 of the 52 games that Zidane’s men played that season. Just 1,119 minutes on the odometer. A bad run that led him to even change his diet: “I am not eating gluten, no wheat, nor cow’s milk. It’s all plant milk. No red meat. In the end, vegetables, fruit, fish and chicken ”, he confessed in an interview in The spar of the SER in November 2021.
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Ancelotti has managed the efforts with Carvajal in this last season and a half. Last season, even with some physical problem (he had a period of one month off and another of three weeks) and the covid hit, he regained the lost title. He participated in 36 games (of the 56 that the team played) and started in 29, but of these he only finished 16. He finished the season as the eleventh player with the most minutes in the squad (2,598 minutes) and failed to link three games complete in a row A streak that he has not managed to chain this season either… although it was due to the substitution against Osasuna four minutes from time.
Without that change, he would have spun a full five straight games. He has been present in 20 of Madrid’s 25 games, started 16 and completed 6. Without having reached the middle of the season, he has spent 1,427 minutes, 55% of those he reached in the entire last season and more than in the previous one. Lucas Vázquez’s injury and Odriozola’s insignificance in Ancelotti’s plans now put the youth squad player to the test. A solution or a problem.
