Evaluating Real Madrid’s massive left-back problem
By Sahel Kazi
Jewels of the future
As reported by MARCA, Real Madrid have been considering bringing Fran Garcia back to the Santiago Bernabeu from Rayo Vallecano. He could be the perfect competition to Mendy, who currently has only David Alaba to compete with and the Austrian is already a starter at centre-back.
With a €10 million release clause believed to be in his contract with Rayo Vallecano, other clubs in Spain and abroad are being linked with him too.
Most prominent of those are Real Betis and Sevilla, who both have exciting projects for an ‘up-and-coming’ footballer of Garcia’s repertoire.
The options are not bleak for him but a return to Real Madrid would be most ideal given he left the club in the summer of 2021 and came through the youth ranks at the Santiago Bernabeu. As for Los Blancos, other players such as the likes of Theo Hernandez and Miguel Gutierrez are also being linked with potential returns.
Hernandez has just come off the back of a very impressive World Cup campaign with France and has enjoyed great success with AC Milan ever since joining the Italian giants.
Unlike Hernandez, who grew up representing Atletico Madrid on the youth level, Gutierrez actually came through the ranks at Castilla. He is also younger and his transfer fee would be much lower. But the AC Milan star is on a higher level of quality, output and consistency in the present.
Bayern Munich’s Canadian left-back, Alphonso Davies, is also rumoured to be a target for Real Madrid, but for the summer of 2024 and not before that.
Regardless, Garcia seems to be at the top of Real Madrid’s wish list at the moment. The one thing consistent with all these targets is that it shows the profile that the club are looking for to compete with and possibly displace Mendy. A young, fast, attacking left-back is what the club are in search of, not moving away at all from the growing trend of offensive full-backs in the modern game.