One day before Real Madrid faced José Mourinho’s Benfica in the first leg of the Champions League playoff in mid-February, the Whites regained the top spot in La Liga. Barcelona had lost in Girona and it was matchday 24. By the end of matchday 34 of the championship, the shadow of the Portuguese coach hovers over the Bernabéu bench and Álvaro Arbeloa’s team, complaining about the squad’s commitment, only has delaying the inevitable left: Barcelona’s title. For that, they must win in a week at Camp Nou.
Read more Vinicius extends the League until the clásico
This Sunday, in Cornellà, Madrid needed a huddle after the break to defeat a Espanyol in free fall. Two strikes from Vinicius, without Kylian Mbappé, led the tournament to the Culé fortress meeting. A contribution from the Brazilian that once again encouraged Arbeloa to lavish praise on his star: “The team leader, once again,” he proclaimed. “A total threat, very aggressive, intelligent, brave, constant. I reserved him because I didn’t want to risk him not being in the clásico. That’s why he was the substitution. He helped defensively, I always appreciate when he links up with the midfield. He is a born leader, a teammate everyone loves, a great person,” the coach added.
But if he extended the praise to the winger, even more so when he spoke about the locker room’s improvable attitude. He had already referred to that in the pre-match and even more so in the post-match. It had been a while since he gave such a long answer and his speech revealed everything he has missed. “Is Vinicius more committed than Mbappé to his teammates?” they asked him.
“I don’t get into comparisons. We need the commitment of all players to win any match. I tell them many times: ‘It hurts me when we see that all teams run more than us.’ Not only when we don’t have the ball, but when we do. We must be a team with much more mobility, make many more runs off the ball, which is uncomfortable because to get the ball you have to make a thousand runs off the ball. We need everyone’s commitment to press, defend, attack. If you want to be a very complete team, talent alone is not enough. I like to see when players understand this. Those are the values of Real Madrid. We didn’t create Madrid with players dressed in tuxedos, but with players who end with their shirts soaked in sweat, mud, effort, consistency, sacrifice. Since this team always brings the best, when they understand what Madrid is, talent and commitment come together and that makes us the best team in the world,” he elaborated.
Read more So the Madrid alive, at least
Another injury for Mendy
Over time, and with everything already lost, Arbeloa’s speech increasingly points to the will and effort of the squad. The issue, always thorny because it questions the players’ dedication, he denied in the first weeks of his tenure, but he has ended up acknowledging it, like Carlo Ancelotti and Xabi Alonso before him, and very explicitly in his latest appearances.
Name by name, the one he had to answer most about on the night in Cornellà was the absent and injured Mbappé. They asked him about his trips in his free time and he avoided commenting. “I can’t get into that,” he concluded. Regarding the chances of him being available next Sunday at Camp Nou, he left it up in the air. “We’ll see. After last week’s tests, it seemed it was going to be a bit longer,” he said.
The one who will not be in the clásico is Mendy, who only lasted 12 minutes healthy. In a run, he grabbed his right leg and immediately went to the bench. The Whites’ most impenetrable defender carries such a fragile body that this time he retired after linking two starts in nine days. Fran García came on in his place, not Carreras, who does not rate positively with Arbeloa. Neither did Ceballos, out of the squad for the second consecutive match by technical decision.
