The harsh reason why Isco won’t leave Real Madrid this winter

When Carlo Ancelotti became the head coach of Real Madrid for the second time in June, one of his biggest, or perhaps, the biggest goal was to get the best out of Vinicius Junior, and get him to start scoring more goals, improve his finishing. And he has done exactly that, which is fantastic. At the same time, he’s kept Real Madrid at the top of La Liga, eight points clear of Sevilla, 17 clear of Atletico Madrid and 18 clear of Barcelona. To say things are looking good for Los Blancos would be an understatement.

But there was another goal, I think. At least one more thing that was in his plans was to get Isco to become an important player for Real Madrid once again. We all know the quality that Isco possesses, we’ve seen it in Zinedine Zidane and Carlo Ancelotti’s first stints as coaches at Real Madrid, so it was obvious right from the start that Ancelotti would love to revitalise Isco. The Spaniard was a great player to have during Ancelotti’s first stint, but then before his second one, things had kind of taken a turn for the worse. Isco was unfit, lethargic, inefficient, unproductive and all things you don’t want to see in a midfielder, or well, in any player in any position.

Fast forward into the final days of 2021, he still is the same player. It didn’t take long for Ancelotti to realise that Isco is simply not the player the Italian wants to have in his team. And now, we see rumors of Real Madrid open to selling Isco in January itself. Rumors from MARCA talk about that, but I think the harsh reality is that he won’t get sold this winter because he simply isn’t bringing anything to any team. And, that he’d literally be available for free in the summer.

No team would want to buy this version of Isco for a transfer fee

It’s very obvious. If a player has only started 10 games for the club in the last two seasons combined, he is simply not good enough anymore. Yes, it is different when the club is Real Madrid, but he was good enough at one point. I’ve said this about many players and I think it applies to Isco as well: If you don’t back your talent up with a sufficient amount of hard work at the very least, you won’t be able to compete at the top level for much longer. Isco has stopped doing that, and he’s fallen down the pecking order for Real Madrid. He had his highs, of course, but it didn’t take too long for him to come back to Earth.

He might also fall even further down since Ceballos is supposed to return to the team very soon, and Ancelotti has said that he’d have a big role to play in the second half of the season. I know managers say that to keep the morale up and for the sake of saying something to the press, but the former Betis man will, at the very least, get some chances with the first team, and that’s when he can impress Ancelotti.

Point is, Isco has got nothing going for him at the moment, and why would any team want to buy a player who’s got nothing going for him? What does he bring to a team that a talented youngster from the academy doesn’t? Who will support his wages when you can simply count on a talented young player from the academy, or on a youngster in the first team wanting to make it work? Granted, they’d be inconsistent at the start, but so will Isco, and those youngsters may have the potential to improve. I don’t think Isco has any will to do the same. He doesn’t provide a team with anything that would absolutely change their season for the better immediately upon joining, so why would they want to spend the money on him?

Isco has won everything there is to win with a club, he has earned a lot of money, he’s done whatever he wanted to and he’s accomplished most, if not all of his goals. There might be a mid-level team that might use him, but chances aren’t high for that team to use him in January when he’s going to walk for free in the summer and there is seemingly no competition for the signature of the former Malaga man.

Do you remember when there were rumors going around about City wanting to buy Isco for I don’t even know how much in 2018? Yeah, same.