Real Madrid published their squad list for Saturday’s early match against Levante. A number of key players were left out of the squad list.
Real Madrid face Levante for the second home match of the season at the Santiago Bernabéu. Despite a number of players returning to training after the completion of international duty, Real Madrid will still not have the full squad available for the match against Levante.
Luka Modric, Keylor Navas, Achraf Hakimi, Borja Mayoral, and Raphael Varane were all left out of the squad. Add the still-suspended Cristiano Ronaldo to that list, and that’s quite a few Real Madrid players who can’t be selected for the match.
Varane, Casemiro, and Keylor Navas were all experiencing some minor injury issues that kept them out of Thursday’s training, but they were all able to complete training today. Nevertheless, two of those three players were left out, and Casemiro is the only one who will be available for selection tomorrow.
Zidane may be hesitant to rush Varane back from injury. The center-back seems to spend a good chunk of every season injured, so it makes sense to not want to risk re-injuring the center-back. This will give Jesus Vallejo an opportunity to make his competitive Real Madrid debut.
R. Madrid squad to face Levante. #RMLiga pic.twitter.com/v6UcXery8w
— Elvis Sober (@SoberBlanco) September 8, 2017
Also absent will be Real Madrid’s new No.10, Luka Modric. It makes sense that Modric was left out of the lineup. Modric’s Croatian National Team had their match temporarily suspended for a day due to rain, after having already played 22 minutes of that match. Despite Croatia’s eventual 1-0 victory over Kosovo, Modric complained to the press afterwards that the scheduling issues shows that FIFA doesn’t care about the players, and is willing to risk the players health and match-preparation in order to ensure their fixtures go off without a hitch. Modric could be worn out from having to deal with these delayed matches and scheduling mixups.
Or, perhaps Zidane has a more festive reason for leaving the little Croatian wizard out of his squad. After all, tomorrow is Luka Modric’s birthday! Maybe Zidane just wanted to give Modric the opportunity to rest and relax on his birthday. Put your feet up, Luka, you deserve it!
As for the rest of the squad, it seems that Zidane is just doing one of the things that Zidane does best: rotations, rotations, rotations. Keylor Navas has been playing really well for both his club and his country of late, but Kiko Casilla will get his shot to impress in goal tomorrow. Perhaps we might also see the inclusion of other squad players like Dani Ceballos, Theo Hernandez, and Marcos Llorente.
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