Luka Jovic has it bad to play many minutes at Real Madrid this season. Zidane knows it, the club knows it and the Bosnian Serb player himself knows it, who proved it in his flesh at Anoeta, in Real Madrid's league debut this 2020-21 season. Despite the 0-0 score and White's difficulty in generating chances and defining them, Zidane did not shoot in the 90 minutes of his substitute point, which cost 60 million euros last summer after scoring 27 goals at Eintracht Frankfurt.
Not only is Jovic not playing for a minute in San Sebastián; is that Zidane did not exhaust the five allowed changes (He stayed at four) and two of those he did were to give the alternative with the elders to Marvin and Arribas, two castillistas and recent Youth League champions led by Raúl González Blanco. Borja Mayoral, also on the bench in Anoeta, is another who can take note after the first stake of the course.
Zidane's explanation at a press conference as to why he did not consider the Serbian's entry timely exposes an important problem for Jovic: “I have not wanted to change the drawing, it is complicated. You can put another point, but if you put another forward you change the drawing and I didn't want to. We had to put players on the wings and we did that. Karim was playing well… ”. Or what is the same: either with the 4-3-3 or with the 4-2-3-1, Zidane does not consider having a two ‘nines’ lead, the old-fashioned way. Even when he forms a 4-4-2, he will do so by combining Benzema with another player with characteristics closer to one extreme, such as Vinicius, Hazard, Rodrygo or Asensio. The Benzema-Jovic duo is not on Zidane's mind, and that takes away much hope for the Balkan.
Zidane: blind faith in Benzema
Benzema played 12,760 minutes under Zidane, the coach with whom the French striker enjoyed the most participation, ahead of Mourinho (9,102 ') and Ancelotti (7,723'). Only five footballers have had more minutes for the Marseille coach: Kroos, Ramos, Casemiro, Varane and Carvajal. Benzema is close to the top-5 and any analysis of Zidane's Madrid is to recognize him as ZZ's favorite striker, even when the goals have not accompanied him: last season, without going any further, Benzema played 3,981 minutes of the 4,620 he played the Madrid. 86%; the remaining 14% is the terrain in which Jovic must move, very scarce for a player who entailed a significant outlay.
And the point is that, as if it were a puzzle, the pieces fit almost perfectly: Benzema stopped playing 639 minutes last season and Jovic enjoyed only 806 '(in which he gave two assists and scored two goals). That is to say: Jovic played the very little that Benzema did not enjoy and a few more minutes in final stages in which Madrid fought to overcome an adverse result and Zidane (metaphorically) let go of his hair causing several forwards to come together in attack.
Benzema leaves no room for Jovic
Against this background, it is logical that Real Madrid is considering the option of giving Jovic to a team in which he can be the starting point and play a good number of minutes, score goals in sufficient quantity to be able to raise his cache again and next summer, hopefully, transfer it for a significant amount to balance the white beads. If that happened, Mayoral would have all the ballots to stay as Real Madrid's second striker (Mariano does not count), something that already happened in the 2017-18 season.
Mayoral knows well what it is like to be a substitute for Benzema: in that course he barely enjoyed 927 minutes, despite the fact that he scored seven goals and gave three assists in that time; Benzema, throughout the season, only scored 12 goals and gave 11 more, in 3,237 minutes. The Frenchman participated in a goal every 140 '; that of Parla, every 93 ’. It is a good proof of the blind faith that Zidane has in Benzema and of how difficult Jovic has it, also this year, at Real Madrid.