The casting that Zidane did not want

The puncture in Benzema's left adductor at Mestalla he made Zidane look at the part of the bench where they usually are, watching the games go by, Jovic and Mariano. The injury to the French striker that Madrid doctors will have to diagnose this Tuesday after the relevant 48 hours (the first version of the club, still in Valencia, is that it is an overload) has brought an unexpected casting to the scene. If Karim is not around the stop, against Villarreal, the starting eleven will have the defenestrated Jovic or Mariano… unless Zidane invents a tactical filigree.

A complex panorama against the Yellow Submarine, which has only lost once in the nine games played and is launched in the League (it is second). The Madrid with the most goal problems of the era postChristianOf his 14 league goals, four went to bottom Huesca, he would be left without his only reliable nine. The figures are bleak. Between the two, Jovic and Mariano, they have only played 1,123 minutes with Madrid since the summer of 2019 (1,025 'the Serbian and 98' the Hispanic-Dominican) with a combined contribution of just three targets. In that time, Benzema billed 33 points …

Within the pulse to occupy the gap left by the French attacker, Mariano regains ground for a simple reason: Jovic has gone with Serbia during this national team break and he stays in Valdebebas. Although there has never been personal harmony between the two since they shared their destinies in the first team, at least Zidane will be able to calibrate the real state of Mariano with tests more specific. In Mestalla he already gave him an advance: only a ball approached him and finished it off. That does not change.

Zidane wanted them away

It would not be the first time that Zidane extracts Mariano from the depths of the bench when no one, perhaps not Mariano himself, expected him. He did it in the Super Cup in Saudi Arabia, when he made him play the semifinals against Valencia. But everything has happened to Mariano since the confinement. A positive for coronavirus, a strange tonsillitis and especially a non-transfer to Benfica that upset Madrid because it seemed like something made to satisfy Zidane and to save the important soldier from the forward. He did not want to go and until last Sunday at the Mestalla the most he had achieved was to be summoned to two games, precisely the previous ones (Huesca and Inter) to the painful 4-1.

Jovic's thoughts seem inscrutable, but maybe in Mönchengladbach, where Madrid fought hard to lift the 2-0 that left him almost mortally wounded in the Champions League with Ramos as nine and the Serbian without even heating, a recent and striking phrase from Zidane echoed in his mind. “I asked Jovic”, was the way in which the French escaped from the uncomfortable situation in which he put Borja Mayoral a few weeks ago. The Parleño confessed when he arrived in Rome (where the week he made a double against Cluj in Europe) that the coach preferred him in Madrid over the Balkan.

Zidane's decision against Villarreal. it is conditioned to what happens with Benzema. In the bedroom is the castillista Hugo Duro, which has entered the branch like a bison. A casting, seeing the mistrust in him staff with Jovic and Mariano, in which there is no excess.