Lunin at the crossroads

Real Madrid started the preseason with only 13 members of the first team, 14 if we count Altube, Castilla goalkeeper and, de facto, third goalkeeper of the white squad. Among them is Andriy Lunin, the first substitute for Thibaut Courtois in the Madrid goal, who did not make the final list for the Eurocup with Ukraine and who has started this preparation in the middle of a crossroads: he can stay in Madrid, with the guarantee almost absolute that he will not have minutes (unless Courtois is injured), or try an exit in the form of a transfer or transfer with which to continue growing in just a few minutes.

Because those minutes that every young person needs, and Lunin is (he's only 22 years old), are scarce in Madrid: he closed the 2020-21 season, the first in which he joined the Madrid squad, with just one game played and 120 minutes in total. It is true that circumstances did not align with him: he was Alcoyanazo's goalkeeper (2-1 in Madrid's first round in the Cup) and Madrid's early elimination prevented him from having more matches in the KO tournament. In the League and in the Champions League he could not play even once, with Madrid at the limit in both competitions almost from the beginning, with no room for evidence.

It remains to be seen what Ancelotti thinks in relation to the substitute goalkeeper position. In the past in Madrid, he showed that the Cup is the tournament that he leaves for the reserve goalkeeper: He did so in 2014-15, in which Keylor Navas was chosen to participate in the competition organized by the RFEF, with the Tico in the shadow of Casillas. The 2013-14 season does not serve to draw conclusions in this regard: it was the course in which Diego López and Casillas shared the League (for the first) and the Cup and the Champions (both for the second). An experiment that, coincidentally, turned out to be pearls: they won the two tournaments that Casillas played, the League was close, but finally it was for Atleti. As a curiosity, in 2014-15 Luis Enrique repeated the experience with Bravo and Ter Stegen at Barcelona and was right: he won the treble.

Lunin, neither in Madrid nor in Ukraine

Lunin has not played a full course fluently since the 2017-18 season, the last season he belonged to Ukraine's Zorya Lugansk., before signing for Madrid. In 2018-19 he was loaned to Leganés, where he was in the shadow of Pichu Cuéllar and barely played 544 minutes in seven games. In 2019-20, Madrid sought a loan with better prospects for him (the relationship with Leganés deteriorated due to the lack of prominence that Lunin received) and was transferred to Valladolid, where Sergio always bet on Masip and barely gave him two games of Cup, 210 minutes. Madrid did not allow another year to pass practically in white and broke the assignment in January to send him to Oviedo, in Second. In Asturias he resurfaced: 1,800 minutes in 20 games in which he conceded only 20 goals and left the door to zero six times.

His little background in the 2020-21 academic year in Madrid ended up taking its toll on Ukraine, where he had always had a hole after triumphing in the youth teams: he was the hero of the Ukraine U-20 that won the 2019 World Cup, conceding only four goals in six games. He had been called up with the absolute until October 2020, when that trend was stopped, with Shevchenko inclined to shoot goalkeepers with a competitive rhythm such as Buschan, Pyatov or Trubin. If he remains at Madrid, his options to return with his national team are slim; if you go out, that door can be reopened …