Real Madrid-Celta | On the ground: Sergio Ramos is missing and Iago Aspas arrives

In strict terms, Iago Aspas will not enter the history of the 'one club man' because he suffered a year in Liverpool and another in Seville, the worst of his career, but it is difficult to find a more influential athlete in a sports entity. Two seasons ago he was injured for three months. Of ten games without him, Celta won one and was on the verge of descent. In the last ten, those of the truth, he returned and the team only lost two and was saved. “The pressure was enormous. People would stop me on the street and constantly ask me when I was going to return.”

Celta never depended so much on a footballer and never a footballer depended so much on Celta. Since his return in 2015, he has not dropped below 14 goals per season. In three of them he was the top national scorer. “I have earned more money abroad, but here I am paid well for what I do, I enjoy and am happy in my town.” His town is Moaña, where it is common to find him “in the supermarket, the pharmacy or having dinner in a bar”. The son of a mechanic (that's where his passion for cars comes from) and a shellfish woman, he is the top scorer in Celta's history. This season, in the League, he has nine goals and six assists (Benzema is his closest pursuer in one and the other), and has participated in 86% of the goals of his team. In this, the French or Messi are very far away.

The Coudet factor

Over the years it has gotten better. He is now 33 and did not debut with the Selection until he was 29. He was counted on by Lopetegui, Hierro, the first Luis Enrique and Robert Moreno. Inexplicably, for a year and a half they have not called him again, more so when this season he is the top scorer in the League for a team that is not even in the European zone. Your fitness coincides with the discharge of Sergio Ramos due to stomach upset. They have been absent in six games and Madrid have only won two. Nacho, his relief, will have an algebra test (follow the game live on AS.com).

Then there is the Coudet effect. The Argentine took the seventeenth team and has taken them to eighth place by adding 16 of the last 18 points, with only three goals conceded. He has done it by changing very little, in the style of Zidane. Eight players have started in all the games. In addition, he returned the captaincy to Hugo Mallo, He gave more prominence to Brais Méndez and brought together all the talented (Brais himself, Denis Suárez, Aspas and Nolito) in a daring 4-1-3-2. “If I win without playing well, I don't leave completely. It's difficult for luck to be with you constantly,” he often says. His plan is to risk little behind, even at the cost of not always getting the ball clean, and steal high: “It is easier to convince a striker to run fifteen meters forward than fifty backward”. In six of his seven games he had more possession than the rival. And he only lost when the opposite happened (against Sevilla). Amazing data for a team that finished 17th in the last two leagues.

Benzema, Mendy, Ramos, Hazard …

In the same ones that Aspas is Benzema in Madrid. Six goals and two assists in the last six games and a 55% participation in the team's scoring production in the League. In four of the five defeats of the season he did not score and Zidane has erased his two relays from the map, Mariano and Jovic. The Catalan has not played since November 28 and the Serbian since the 8th of the same month. They did not even warm up during the final siege of Edgar Badía's goal.

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The tie in Elche He will return Mendy to eleven and he will again take Marcelo ahead, starter in four of Madrid's five defeats, and perhaps Asensio. His site is that of Hazard, who already had minutes at the Martínez Valero. He did not leave a mark, but the club and the coach consider him crucial in the last semester despite the fact that he has not played a full game since November 2019. And the Odegaard question remains pending, another missing without a trace. His initial start was short-lived, then he was injured twice and evaporated after the loss in Kiev to Shakhtar. His status as a galactic pandemic has been brief. In the last ranking he appears even behind Isco, who is already falling.