Real Madrid: 5 burning questions from the Spanish Supercup loss

Will Real Madrid regret their treatment of Luka Jovic?

I am not here to play the blame game. I have no idea what is going on behind closed doors or who makes the decisions in Madrid. What I know is this. Real Madrid took one of the world’s most promising strikers – a man who had scored 27 goals in the previous campaign – and shattered his confidence. They spent 60 million euros just to shove Luka Jovic on the bench, teasing him with back-to-back starts before kicking him to the curb. And to rub salt in the wound, if they ever did call upon him to play, he would run around for the match’s final two minutes.

That is not how you treat a young striker who needs confidence. Every single young player who wants to play for Real Madrid needs to take a long look at how players like Jovic have been treated, and I am sure they are indeed doing that and are a little leery about playing for Zidane. Legend or not, idol or not, three-peat or not, there is a reason to be concerned.

Jovic is gone for now. He has been loaned out to Eintracht Frankfurt, back in the city that nurtured him to his brilliant 2018-2019 season.

And now that he’s gone, Zidane has Mariano Diaz and nobody else. But this is what he wanted, right? He wanted to run Jovic out of town and make him “learn his lesson” on loan. Now, he has to pray Benzema doesn’t get injured, because Mariano is the next man up. The only man up. And as we saw against Deportivo Alaves, Mariano isn’t the one you want leading the line on a team with no wingers surpassing two goals this season.