Asier Illarramendi (Mutriku, 1990) turns 32 on Tuesday of next week. And except for a last-minute scare, he is going to do it with the desire to link two games in a row in the League. It may seem like a ridiculous figure, but not for the Mutrikuarra midfielder. Nothing ago that was unthinkable for him. Because just a week ago he broke a 287-day drought against Osasuna without playing a league match. It is said soon. Injuries have been an ordeal for the last three years for the Real Sociedad captain, with whom he came to make a readaptation plan to the demands of the elite, controlling his loads so that his body could once again withstand the intensity of the efforts that footballers have to make at the highest level.
But that ordeal is past, and Illarramendi returns to the Santiago Bernabéu as a new player, and if Imanol doesn’t say otherwise, it may even be the commander in the square of the scratched txuri-urdin of his classic position of ‘4’, from where so He sees football well, with those privileged vision of the game and short touch that they could enjoy so little at Real Madrid, when Illarra changed his shirt in exchange for a whopping 32 million euros at the time, in the summer of 2013.
And that came to play 90 games with Real Madrid in two seasons. He didn’t adapt, for whatever reason. And she returned home after two years for 16 million euros. The operation went round for Real. But Illarra was no longer the same person who had gone to Madrid. The injuries have not left him. Although his first three years back in Donosti paid off an average of 40 games per season.
But an injury at Mestalla in the 2018-19 season was the beginning of his ordeal, accompanied by a serious ankle injury at San Mamés at the start of the 19-20 campaign. And from then on, after long and complicated recoveries, continuous muscle problems that caused untimely relapses have prevented him from enjoying football. And more injuries like the one he suffered at the end of the stoppage season due to the coronavirus, or the one he suffered in the run-up to the Cup final at La Cartuja last year.
La Liga Santander
*Data updated as of March 3, 2022
A dark tunnel from which it seemed that it was never going to come out. The mutrikuarra had barely been able to play six games in the last year, until the pleasant news of seeing him in the starting eleven against Osasuna last Sunday. He repeated from the bench in Mallorca. And nothing has been known of new muscle discomfort.
Great news. Illarra returns in this way to that Bernabéu in which he has not been able to play in the last two victories of the Real, like a reborn player, who enjoys football again and with the intention that this will be his definitive recovery. He is looking for a continuity that, moreover, is necessary for his future, because his contract with Real ends in 2023, and it is evident that in the current circumstances it is not easy to propose a renewal, no matter how important it has been in the recent history of the club.