A midfield to revive at Real Madrid

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Kroos, Valverde and Vinicius, in the match against Shakhtar at the Bernabéu.

The game and results hole in which Madrid is involved this 2023 has had one of its critical points in the center of the field, if not the most.

While the rest of the plots have still found in this pronounced post-World Cup drop some minimal hooking point, even a total recovery under the sticks with Courtois, in the core the bankruptcy has been enormous.

It has not been neither for the touch nor for the removal.

He has not weighed on the attacking organization and appears under the magnifying glass for the team's defensive problems, beyond individual errors in the rear, which have not been rare either.

The demanding cupbearer commitment this Thursday in Vila-Real (9:00 p.m., La 1) in a single match will be another thermometer to measure the degree of the fracture.

Modric rests and joins the absences of Carvajal, Lucas Vázquez, Alaba and Tchouameni (the youth player Vinicius Tobias enters)

Carlo Ancelotti renewed the votes on Wednesday in Kroos (33 years old), whom he praised, but the loss of Tchouameni (he still has about two weeks left) returned him the last appointments to the pivot, a demarcation against the grain for the German due to his difficulties to containment tasks.

The other alternative at hand is Camavinga (20), whose price multiplied in the white offices in the run-up to the Champions League final due to his great incidence in comebacks, but this time he has not received the stripes from the Italian.

In fact, with water around his neck, he was the first sacrificed against Barcelona.

In the entire season, he has only completed one game, against Cacereño.

There is usually no wide sleeve for him.

"I have removed him many times at half-time and I have not always been fair to him," Carletto tried to relieve him.

With Modric (37), there is unanimity in the diagnosis: the World Cup weighs on him, so he stops against Villarreal.

Valverde (24) is probably the most unrecognizable considering his pre-Qatar effervescence.

He left Arabia with a single shot on goal in 195 minutes when until November he averaged more than double: 1.17 every 90 minutes.

"To be a champion you have to go out 100% and it has not been like that," the Uruguayan warned this Sunday.

And Ceballos (26), whose bad pass opened the door to Barça's third goal, continues without escaping his insignificance in his last year of contract: he has only played more minutes (408) than Mariano, Odriozola, Vallejo and Hazard.

The area with the most intervention by Carletto

Riyadh's corrective confirmed the laziness of Madrid's midfield in previous matches, especially at Vila-Real in the League, and Ancelotti's intervention in the middle of the Super Cup crisis once again made it clear which are his preferred pieces to leverage: Kroos and Modric, rennet and seniority.

He insisted with them after the disastrous first part in the final before abdicating with an unprecedented duo: Valverde and Ceballos.

The average has been so far this year the area where Carletto has intervened the most.

In 15 of the 26 games, the first substitution has affected that plot.

Up front, with Hazard and Mariano ruled out, only Rodrygo remains, who has actually started many games due to the absence of Benzema, and Asensio's resource, rarely effective.

In the center of the field, however, the wardrobe does offer different profiles to try to change scripts: the illustration of Kroos and Modric, and the fresh legs of Camavinga, Valverde and Tchouameni.

Hierarchies, yes, are another matter.

There they continue to send the same.

In any case, with each other, the defensive gaps and the difficulties to remain compact in the field have persisted throughout the course, according to the continuous warnings of the Italian coach,

Last campaign also started with problems in its protection system and it resolved them precisely by adjusting that plot.

First with Casemiro, Kroos and Modric as an unchangeable combination, and grouped in a low block.

And then in spring the inclusion of Valverde on the right gave him another twist on the way to the fourteenth European Cup.

Now any solution that can come to fruition must also pass through the middle, the area that has changed the least in the last decade but which, by its own natural law, is approaching a new scenario.

Tchouameni and Camavinga arrived, and Valverde sprouted, but while that change of era arrives, the non-negotiable names for Ancelotti until this January slope have continued to be Kroos and Modric, waiting to be renewed.

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