Side Factory

One spring day 17 years ago, a boy from the Real Madrid quarry, accompanied by no less than Alfredo Di Stéfano, laid the first stone of the new sports city of the white club on a Valdebebas field. Nine and a half years later, that young man came to the first team: already a professional footballer, Dani Carvajal. The one from Leganés did not put a simple T-shirt in an urn that morning of his childhood: he sowed the seed of a line of brilliant band players that this season has sprouted again with the emergence of Miguel Gutiérrez. Reguilón and Achraf They are the other great laterals that the new Factory has produced.

About to turn two decades since he joined the club, Dani Carvajal, 29, is the first great product to come out of the Real Madrid City of Valdebebas. Since he returned from his year of Erasmus at Eintracht Frankfurt, he has taken over the right wing. The injuries that have tortured him have prevented him from reaching 300 games with the first team this season. He takes the counter at 294 and, without the injuries they respect him, he will reach the milestone coinciding with the arrival of autumn. He has 45 caps to his credit with La Roja.

Reguilón and Achraf, the other two sides of Factory consecrated, they have had to make a living outside the first team. The one from Collado Villalba learned very early the difficulty of finding a place in Madrid, with two assignments to UD Logroñés, in Second B, during his time at Castilla. He enjoyed the confidence of ownership in the Solari stage, but with the return of Zidane, Marcelo first and Mendy later blocked his way. He has already reached a hundred matches in the elite, including those he has played in clubs (22 in Madrid, 38 in Sevilla and 36 in Tottenham) and his six caps with the National Team.

Achraf, 22, has quickly become an all-out wing player, capable of performing as a winger, winger and inside on both flanks.. Its emergence followed a path parallel in part to that of its two promotional predecessors. From Reguilón he inherited the need to leave seeing that he had his options blocked in the first team. De Carvajal emulated his assignment to become tanned in the Bundesliga. In the case of the Hispano-Moroccan, it was two years at Dortmund, in which he graduated cum laude. His transfer to Inter last summer for 45 million euros is the second highest sale of a player raised in the white quarry, after the 66 million that Chelsea paid for Morata in 2017 (Reguilón's last summer, 30 million from Tottenham, is also in the top-10 in sales of any Madrid player). And this summer the club nerazzurri he can storm the bench with a new transfer, with great interest from clubs such as PSG or Chelsea, current Champions of the Champions League. He has 135 games at the highest club level and 31 caps for Morocco, a team with which, even at 19 years old, he started at the World Cup in Russia.

The last band diamond from the Valdebebas factory is Miguel Gutierrez. The winger, who turns 20 on July 27, ended the season as a starter due to Mendy's injury and Marcelo's performance drop. He closed the year with six games played with the first team, three of them as a starter. The Youth League that Juvenil A conquered from the hand of Raúl last summer made him known among the general public and this year he has ended up taking the step. His offensive vocation makes him a versatile player, who has also served as a winger and winger with Castilla. His role in Ancelotti's new project is one of the great issues that will be the focus of the white preseason.

The reconversion of Marcos Llorente

The quartet may soon have to add a fifth member: Marcos Llorente. After a good run as a midfielder, Simeone discovered him at Atlético first as a playmaker and more recently as a right-back. In that position it seems to convince Luis Enrique too, who arranged him glued to the band in the three commitments of the international break in March and He has taken it to the European Championship with the intention of insisting on that idea. There he played in the friendly against Portugal.