From the bench to Cibeles – AS.com

Only fifteen Madrid footballers have played more than 1,000 minutes in this League. On them will rest the title, but the last pushwho could take the team to Cibeles this afternoon, will have to give it a stool justifiably underused. Madrid, therefore, prepares a spoiler with a silencer because it took the League for granted for a long time and the party of the celebration catches the fans looking at the Champions (follow the match live on AS.com). Calendar stuff.

Ancelotti was dropping more than half the lineup in his press conference yesterday. Many clues and no surprises: Vallejo, Marcelo, Camavinga, Ceballos, Asensio… When he came to the attack he lost his voice. Benzema y vinicius They have been nuclear pieces in the not yet mathematical conquest of the title. The first one is in a cannibalistic version and each game is an opportunity to make the best season of his career bigger (41 goals in 41 games). Vinicius is in them. And it’s always hard to take the party away from top players. Removing them will give Ancelotti’s left hand a lot of work. What is ruled out is Bale’s curiosity. Other timely discomfort in the back freed him from the game (and who knows if from the last whistles). This is a party that has never gone with him. He will leave some important goals and an unbeatable record of injuries, 34, one for every three goals.

In any case, Madrid will present a very disfigured team and, in some cases, very inactive. Vallejo has only played 14 minutes all season; Ceballos, 186; Isco, 351; Marcellus, 701. The defense will be unprecedented. Nacho and Militao are suspended and Alaba, injured. Ancelotti already announced yesterday that he manages the option to place as central to Casemirolow due to injury in Manchester and that the game will go well to recover sensations.

Center of the field B

Modric and Kroos, for reasons of relevance and age, will not be starters either. So Valverde, Camavinga and Ceballos, El Sadar’s midfield, will repeat. There they left a magnificent sensation. Y Asensio, already officially declared substitute, will also be at eleven.

To spoil the party comes a Espanyol almost saved, but at this point they almost worry them. He has 39 points and two consecutive losses that have tarnished a quiet season, in which, despite being recently promoted, he was never below sixteenth place. Three consecutive victories in Cornellà (against Getafe, Mallorca and Celta) have brought him very close to permanence. And it is that the team of Vincent Moreno It has been one at home and another quite different outside. Away from his stadium he has only added eight of his 39 points. Only Alavés, bottom team, has done worse.

Darder and Thomas

He will come to the Bernabéu with the best he has and three notable casualties, the full-backs Óscar Gil and Pedrosa and the Albanian Keidi Bare, the nerve of his midfield, but will tell with its two main players, Thomas Raul y Sergi Darder. This has been, in performance, according to artificial intelligence data (Olocip), above the scorer. Cornellà cries out with reason for his inclusion in the National Team.

Darder’s life has taken many turns before coming full circle. He left Artà at the age of 13 to join the Espanyol quarry. Later he looked for better luck in the lower divisions of Malaga and when it caught on, they transferred him to Olympique de Lyon for 13 million. I was 21 years old. Two seasons later he returned to Espanyol on loan and given his good performance, the club decided to buy him for eight million. Everything was going well until in the 2019-2020 campaign the team went under and Darder too. “I was in a blocking situation, any player I faced seemed like the best in the world. The coaches didn’t doubt me, but I did. I hit rock bottom.” A psychologist and Vicente Moreno took that well out of him: “The coach believed in me when I didn’t even believe in myself.” This season he has only missed two games, it is the fifth best assistant of the League and participates in 51% of the team’s goals. Of Tomás, the star, he is at 59% and has gone from more to less: only two goals in the last two months.

The Madrid looks for the missing point and get on the bus on the way to Cibeles without mishaps. It reassures him that the two teams that commit the fewest fouls face each other (perhaps because they are the ones that lose the fewest balls). And Espanyol, which for the down from Pedrosa will not use the defense of five that led to the Wanda, it pursues, in addition to the definitive tranquility, a second joy against Madrid this season (he beat Cornellà 2-1). It will be difficult. He has been ten years without scoring at the Bernabéu and 26 without winning. Whether or not the party is called off depends on the effort you put into the duel.