Rotations on the field, not in the locker room. Zinedine Zidane has the most stable roster of the 20 Primera teams. The French coach has 13 of the 24 players he had under his command in the 2016-17 season, his first full season as Madrid coach. An exercise in which the white team won the double: League and Champions (in addition to the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup). Ramos, Marcelo, Benzema, Varane, Modric, Carvajal, Nacho, Isco, Kroos, Casemiro, Lucas Vázquez and Asensio have continued to defend the white jersey uninterruptedly since then. They are joined by Mariano, with the hiatus of his season at Lyon.
No other LaLiga Santander team kept so many players from that season. The one that comes closest is Athletic, with a dozen footballers. But in the case of lions, there are many nuances they reduce the payroll. Unai Simón, Villalibre and Yeray had a filial file. The goalkeeper did not play any minute, the striker played 77 minutes and then was on loan to Numancia, Real Valladolid and Lorca; while the central did the entire season with the first team. And of the other nine, Herrerín and Unai López left that same season on loan to Leganés, and Vesga did so in the second round to Sporting and in 18-19 also to the cucumber team. That is to say, of the 12 who at some point were under the command of Ernesto Valverde, only 9 enjoyed minutes.
Several teams maintain 8 players: Barcelona, Atlético, Real Sociedad and Levante, then in the Second Division. Las Palmas, which dropped that season, still maintains 7. Among those who were not in the First Division and are now there, Nino's loyalty to Elche stands out. The franjiverde team was in Second Division at the time, dropped to Second B and has re-escalated to First.
Despite the minimal movement in the composition of the staff, Zidane's rotation policy means that Madrid does not have any representative among the 10 players who have played the most games and minutes in the past four seasons and how little this goes. The ranking of matches is headed by Iñaki Williams. With 156 appearances, the Athletic striker has only missed one match. Benzema is eleventh with 138 crashes, but the French is penalized for having only played 66 completes. In fact, Karim is, according to BDF Fútbol, the second player who has been substituted the most times (168) in LaLiga history, equaled by Gustavo López and only behind Joaquín ( 201).
As to minutes, the leader is Oblak, with 12,976 '(93%) at Atlético. The first Real Madrid player in that ranking is Ramos (17th) with 10,629 minutes. (75.7% of the possible) spread over 121 games. In all of them he played as a starter and was only substituted 7 times. The captain adds his 16th season at the club. Marcelo has 15 and Benzema 12.
The stability in the Madrid squad is a unique case in Europe. This was verified last season by the Observatory of the International Center for Sports Studies (CIES) in Neuchatel (Switzerland). The starting players of the white team last season averaged 5 years and 10 months as a madridista, longer than any other club on the continent. And it is that of the 11 players most aligned by Zidane in his starting eleven, only 3 (Courtois, Valverde and Mendy) could not welcome him when he took over the first team bench for the first time.