Everything has the aroma of starting over in this start of Ancelotti's second project at the head of Madrid. Not only for the Italian coach, who sits on the white bench six years after his dismissal. They are also the same faces in a team in which its main players will still be missing, the Modric, Kroos, Courtois, Benzema, Varane, Bale or Hazard, who participated in the Eurocup. Among them, only Alaba has options to travel to Glasgow. I would do it with three training sessions in the legs, but monopolizing the spotlight for being the only real novelty for a game that if it is important for someone is for the meritorious.
The friendly has a second reading that feeds the aroma of reunion with football: 13,000 spectators will be in the stands. Madrid return to play before the public 504 days later. The last game in which this happened, before the pandemic, was on March 8, 2020 and they lost 2-1 to Betis.
Chance to shine for Jovic, Odegaard, Rodrygo or Isco
There could not be a more attractive meeting to start Ancelotti's Madrid 2.0. Sitting on the opposite bench in this small cathedral of football that is the Ibrox Stadium will be the legendary Steven Gerrard, Liverpool legend who in just three seasons has put Rangers back in orbit. He lifted the Scottish league championship last season, returning the entity to the path of success after a long journey through the desert. Economic problems pushed this historic club into bankruptcy in 2012. The punishment, which was even voted on by the other teams in the championship, was exemplary. Down to the Fourth Division, He had to change the name (although he kept his track record) and after a long journey to complete reconstruction, he conquered that historic league that prevented a record held by Celtic, his eternal rival, who would have won, otherwise, his tenth consecutive league. And those are the years, ten, that elapsed between the 54th and 55th Rangers title, this yes, a European record, as it has two more than the Northern Irish Linfield and four more than its eternal rival, Celtic, followed by the Greek Olympiacos (45), Benfica (37), Juventus (36), and Ajax and Madrid (both 34).
Rangers appear in Ibrox Park much more rolled than Madrid, with the entire squad and having drawn 2-2 with Arsenal in this same preseason. The team that Gerrard will have is a mystery, even more so considering that yesterday they played another friendly, this one before the modest Brighton, also with an audience in the stands (7,000 spectators). On Saturday the 31st he starts his league against Livingston and August 10 is played to continue in the Champions League against HJK Helsinki.
In a complicated situation.
At Real Madrid it will be impossible to draw conclusions, beyond the motivation with which the players start that they have the obligation to demonstrate to Ancelotti they are solid alternatives to headlines. The team travels today to Glasgow without yesterday there being a list. Jovic, limping all week, he doesn't want to miss it. Odegaard start a new life with Ancelotti, as Isco, Y Rodrygo he is in a kind of limbo, with the uncertainty of whether or not he will have an extra-community place. They are the main names that must be claimed. And we will have to pay attention, above all, to the casting of youth players: Chust, Gila, Miguel Gutiérrez, Blanco, Marvin and Arribas will have a good handful of minutes.
Not only will the Eurocup internationals be missing. Nor have the four who were in the Copa América (Vinicius, Militao, Casemiro and Valverde) and Kubo, Ceballos, Vallejo and Asensio are still in the Tokyo Games … But it matters little because Madrid is starting again, and it does so with Ancelotti and, above all, with 13,000 screaming throats in the stands.