defeat and an eleven unrecognizable

The Real Madrid will return on Saturday Vallecas almost three years after his last game against Rayo. It was on matchday 35 of the 2018/2019 League and the team then coached by Zinedine Zidane lost 1-0 in a match in which nothing was at stake because the chances of titles had practically vanished from the start.

The season started with Julen Lopetegui on the bench but the Basque coach who was dismissed after a terrible run of results crowned with a painful thrashing at the hands of Barcelona in the Camp Nou. It was the end of October and Solari, then coach of Castilla, took charge of the team.

The improvement of Madrid with the Argentine was minimal and allowed him to win the Club World Cup, but later the white team fell in the Champions League round of 16 against Ajax, in the Cup semi-finals with Barcelona and went down in the League until the new dismissal of Solari at the beginning of March.

In that desolate panorama he returned Zinedine Zidane, with everything lost and the mission of rebuilding a team in ruins in days in which there was nothing at stake. One of those games was against Rayo Vallecano on matchday 35, on April 28, 2019.

Forced to outline the project for the following season, the French coach took advantage of those days to test and evaluate his players. This is the only way to explain the strange line-up that Zidane put in Vallecas, with Courtois in goal, Carvajal, Varane, Vallejo and Marcelo in defence; midfield for Mark Llorente, Kroos, Modric and Ceballos and a double point formed by Mariano Diaz and Gareth Bale.

All of that eleven are still in Madrid with the exception of Varane and Llorente, but they are only established as starters for Ancelotti Courtois, Modric, Kroos and Carvajal. The rest have a very residual role, in the case of Marcelo, Vallejo, Ceballos, Mariano and Bale.

El Rayo, then trained by Paco Jemez, beat Real Madrid by the minimum (1-0) thanks to a solitary penalty goal converted by Embarba but ended up being relegated in the category on the last day. The white team, who wore red that day, barely disturbed the local goal in the ninety minutes.

The situation now is very different, because the Madrid they have to win to continue to maintain or extend their lead in the league and Rayo, despite going six games without a win, is in a comfortable position in the standings.

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