Uncertain future with Ceballos

Ancelotti has reduced his team to a group of 16 players. Breaking through from the depths of the bench seems like a difficult task. He doesn’t help either wearing the symbolic winter ‘signing’ band or having received public praise from the coach. Two months after recovering from the injury that stopped him for the entire first half of the season, Ceballos continues with an irrelevant role in the white team. Since he had his first minutes in the Cup debut against Alcoyano, he is the third player who has played the fewest minutes: 75 minutes of his are not even enough for one game. Only Mariano (54 minutes) and Vallejo (4′) have played less since then and the former Arsenal player is on par with Bale (77′).

“Ceballos is going to have an important role in the second part of the season,” Ancelotti said in January. His words have not yet translated into action when the team has already left behind the border of two thirds of the season. The participation of Ceballos, 25, is collected by drops. In Alcoy the technician, due to misunderstanding, gave him four minutes with the crossing resolved. A symbolic appearance to confirm his recovery. Three days later, more filming: 20 minutes against Sevilla. After the parenthesis of the Super Cup, the KO tournament gave him a new opportunity at a decisive moment. He played the entire extension in Elche and gave an ‘assist’: he executed the shot attempt that Isco deflected to equalize the tie. That was on January 20 and since then he has only had anecdotal appearances from the bench: 3 minutes against Granada, 8 ‘against Alavés, 2’ in Vallecas and 8 ‘again at the Bernabéu against Real Sociedad. Nothing to do with the protagonism that predicted Carletto.

After two years on loan at Arsenal, this was, on his return, a key year for his future. Contract with Real Madrid ends in June 2023. A hypothetical renewal that now seems distant depended on his performance this season. If nothing changes, the club will have to find a destination for him to try to make money with a transfer. His two seasons as a player gunner they earned him a good poster in the Premier, but a possible return to Betis may appear on the horizon, the club in which he was trained and from which he made the leap to Madrid in 2017. The white club paid 16.5 million euros for the signing of the player, then about of turning 20 years old. The current market value of him is €18 million according to the specialized website Transfermarkt.