Real Madrid have been flying high – well at least higher than many expected – throughout this season but one question always remained: How will Carlo Ancelotti deal with rotations, injuries, and fatigue when it happens to one of his key starting players?
With all the experience he has in the game, he has never been known to rotate. We realized early on that he has ten players who are guaranteed starters when fit, with the exception of the right wing, and they will only be changed when required.
To a certain extent, it’s difficult to blame him. You want your best players to be on the pitch at all times for a bigger chance of success. He has already felt what it was like to be sacked by Florentino Perez in the past which is something he never wants to experience again.
The only ways to avoid being sacked are by winning trophies or changing your name to Zinedine Zidane – and so he knows the importance of constant success. However, not everyone is perfect and the current Real Madrid manager is far from it.
Avoiding Risks by Taking Risks
Being employed by Real Madrid is the pinnacle of football. We saw how important it was to Ancelotti when he came back with no questions asked after he received an unexpected call from the club while he was at Everton during the summer. Ever since he was let go by the club in 2015, he was always hoping (but never expecting) to return, and once that opportunity came back, he couldn’t refuse.
Because of that, he knows that he needs to find the recipe for success and that turns out to be starting your best players whenever you can without thinking twice. We witnessed that recently when Los Blancos went up against Athletic Bilbao in the Copa del Rey quarterfinals. Vinicius Junior, Carlos Casemiro, and Rodrygo Goes all started the game having returned from Brazil only a day earlier and fatigue was clear on them.
Even Thibaut Courtois was a starter in the game, which was in a competition that should be where Andriy Lunin can guarantee a start. In the end, Real Madrid were knocked out. Not only were some of the players unable to perform at their best, but Ancelotti’s substitutions also left us with fewer answers and a lot more questions.
Ancelotti does not want to take risks but in that, he is taking risks. Aside from the opposition being able to guarantee who will play and how the game will go, the players know that too. The issue becomes that other less used players in the team will lose motivation and match fitness. That is something that will definitely be shown in training if it hasn’t been shown yet. It’s fair to argue that this will make people want to prove him wrong on the pitch like what we saw from Eden Hazard and Luka Jovic against Granada last weekend but they need constant chances to prove him wrong and those are chances that they will not be getting.