Thibaut Courtois in the pre-season game against Barcelona in the United States. Kevin Jairaj (USA TODAY Sports via Portal Con)
State crisis at Real Madrid two days before the start of the league. Thibaut Courtois tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in training on Thursday, the club said in a statement, and he will undergo surgery in the coming days. Your sabbatical will last several months. The serious injury occurred in a fall during training in Valdebebas, according to sources close to the Belgian goalkeeper.
This is the worst mishap that has ever happened to the 31-year-old. The most significant accident in his medical history so far was the torn meniscus in the distant 2015/16 season, which kept him off the pitch for three months.
The injury jeopardizes Real Madrid’s plans for the season, which begins this Saturday at the San Mamés (9.30pm, Movistar). The second goalkeeper is Andriy Lunin, who has not yet made all possible guarantees after three seasons in a row in the Whites’ first team. A tireless worker in all the destinations he has been through, even obsessed, his development in the sports city after the first two loan seasons (Leganés, Valladolid and Oviedo between 2018 and 2020) did not go as expected.
He has barely completed 17 games with Real Madrid in which he conceded 19 goals. Last season he accumulated the most activity (12 duels), benefiting from several of Courtois’ minor physical problems, with a record of 13 goals against. There are 21 days left before the summer transfer market closes and Madrid can consider a stitch operation in goal. For now, against Athletic, Lunin on stage.
The Belgian’s misfortune outstandingly exacerbates the difficulties Madrid suffer when it comes to providing a protective shield. The eight goals conceded in the four pre-season games in the United States show the imbalances that need to be addressed at this point in the course, which Carlo Ancelotti also recognized, and that they represent the continuity of the problems that have arisen in the past season, with containment tasks Italian technician’s constant appeals to concentration and sacrifice. Improving Courtois’ performance after the World Cup helped make up that deficit.
Without Benzema and now without Courtois
The fall of the goal by two meters opens, at least for the time being, a new era in the white team, which in just a few months has lost the two key players who conquered the league and the Champions League in 2021: Courtois, protagonist of a colossal performance in the final against Liverpool, and Benzema, who quietly left for Saudi Arabia after touching the sky in Paris, winning the Ballon d’Or and beginning a slow decline at the Bernabéu.
The tremendous speed and volatility of football have transformed the Madrid of Courtois, Benzema and Vinicius in 2023 into a Madrid almost entirely geared towards youngsters, with the Brazilian at the helm of a newcomer side that includes Jude Bellingham (penultimate signing ) heard. . expensive of the club, 103 million plus 30 in variables) as a new member. More than ever, Kroos and Modric will act as old senators in the dressing room, although the company intends to cut their minutes.
While all the White Stands pondered the lack of a world-class centre-forward and carried on (and suffered) with Kylian Mbappé’s never-ending streak, the misfortune shattered the goal with the serious injury of Thibaut Courtois, a position reserved only for him.
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