“There has been so much talk about Cristiano and the BBC… But one of the keys to the success of these years has been the quality of the wingers. Marcelo (32 years old) and Carvajal (29) have broken many defenses ”. This was the reflection made by one of the members of Zidane's coaching staff when the echoes of his third consecutive Champions League still resounded, in 2018. At that time, no one guessed such an abrupt decline for the Brazilian or the carousel of injuries for the youth squad that laid the first stone for Valdebebas, a symbol in the club and a mirror in which to look at the rest of the kids. That decline, together with the lack of a goal left by Cristiano, have turned Madrid into an ordinary team …
In the offices of the Bernabéu they have always been aware of the symbolic burden that Carvajal has on the squad and of his football value. Hence, after raising the Coronavirus League, the entity rushed to extend Carvajal's contract until June 2025. He will end up with 34 years, the same as Ramos now has. Now, Zidane begins to breathe with the possibility of recovering him in the face of the carousel of vital matches that he has in sight, with the Liverpool-Barça-Liverpool sequence in which, surely, much of the season will be played. Carvajal already exercises on the pitch and, presumably, will be able to have minutes against Eibar.
The numbers speak clearly of the lack that Carvajal has made this season. He has only been able to play 12 of the 38 games played by Real Madrid, but the team has not lost any of them: nine wins and two draws. And, beyond that circumstance, Zidane found with him and Lucas Vázquez a magical right wing that ensures the necessary balance to take out the Italian games, given the lack of a goal after Cristiano left. With Carvajal and Lucas occupying the right-hand side, Madrid has reaped six victories and two draws.
The lesions.
In any case, Carvajal is also the protagonist of a certain alarm within the club's medical staff. At the age of 29, he begins to show a marked tendency to injuries. If this season he has only been able to play 12 games out of 38 because of four misfortunes (all of them muscular except the first, a ligament injury that had him out in 8 games), In 2018-19 a total of 16 were lost and in the previous one, 2017-18, up to 13. There is only one parenthesis in this marked trend, the coronavirus season (the last one, 2019-20), special because a great break split the campaign in two and there was a lot of rest for the players.
Carvajal is called to continue being important in this Madrid in which he himself opened a path for the youth players, that of transfers to foreign teams (he was chosen two consecutive years as best full-back in the Bundesliga by the hand of Leverkusen) and then returned with the assured position. Now, it is Zidane's missing link that can change the sign of the season.