Any day is better with a little bit of Marcelo…
Real Madrid held their fifth training session on Thursday morning, in their third day of work. Twenty-three players worked out, with the absences being the injured Nuri Sahin and Jorge Casado, who had some pains in his groin area. The intensity of the work was ramped up as compared to the previous sessions, and the goalkeepers joined the field players for the first time. With Casado out, Aitor Karanka joined the team as the leftback, and was given the unenviable task of trying to stop Cristiano Ronaldo. It was definitely more intense for him as well, since his previous participation consisted of giving instructions to the players or looking at the playbook. Jorge was back for the afternoon session, having recovered completely from his groin pains. The team practiced tactical maneuvers during this session.
Sergio was certainly exhausted by the effort needed to search for that pair of yellow jeans (to extend his collection AND to match Iker) in Beverly Hills for the training sessions. Meanwhile, Mou looks like he’s celebrating a goal a la Cristiano.
The next session will be on Friday morning at 10h local time (19h Madrid time), at the same place – North Athletic Field – and will be completely open to the press and the public. I foresee many people calling in sick or skipping class tomorrow morning… And there will even be another press conference after! I say that because there was also a press conference on Thursday, with Ricardo Carvalho and his protégé Fábio Coentrão appearing before the press. I think we’ve heard/seen more from the players in these past three days than we had in the last three months of the season!
Fábio spoke (via a translator, since he doesn’t speak Spanish yet) about how he doesn’t feel pressured that Real Madrid paid €30 million for him: “I’ve been hearing for some time that I was expensive, but I’m sure that I have the quality and I want to show why they paid this amount of money for me… I’m sure that in the future, I will respond with certainty to the question of if I’m worth this money.” Coentrão also said that the entire group has welcomed him (“not only the Portuguese and Brazilians, but also the Spaniards”), that he feels great and that he’s very happy and proud to be part of this team. He added, “I’m having a great time, all the moments here are fun, the people are very fun.”
Meanwhile, Ricky Carvalho, who has a lot of experience with José Mourinho (this is their third stint at a club together, after Porto and Chelsea), was asked about how Mou’s second year is usually better than the first: “from the first day, Mourinho wanted to make improvements. Perhaps the second year will be better, because we know each other better and because there is this ambition to improve. That’s what happened in Porto and Chelsea. With him, we always learn and try to exceed ourselves.” As for his role of team elder, he admitted that “I feel a bit like the padrino, although I don’t want to be seen like that on the field, but rather as one more guy out there.” He said everyone on the team is helping the new players integrate, and with regards to Coentrão, “it could be that Pepe, Cristiano, Coentrão and I spend more time together because we have the same culture, but I believe Fábio has integrated very well on this team.”
Random player stuff: after the morning session, Xabi and Álvaro Arbeloa decided – toilet bags in hand – to go for a browse in UCLA’s campus store, but didn’t end up buying anything as they were besieged by fans and followed around.
Rafa Varane (Sergio called him that and it has stuck) is the tallest field player on the team at 1.91m (the second tallest is Raúl Albiol at one centimeter less, while Tomy Mejías is 1.94m) and the youngest player in Los Angeles – Jesé is two months older.
Iker posted these two photos on his Facebook, with Sergio also tweeting the one he appears in. While Iker wrote that they were having milk tea (again) after dinner, Sergio tweeted that he was with the “legendary” Iker and the “great” Pirate. I like how Sergio’s the only one who’s posing. Iker also posted that he likes Maldita Nerea’s song “Tu mirada me hace grande.” It is a great song, and in general, I love any song that mentions Madrid in the lyrics!
My dream of Fernando Hierro returning to Real Madrid has definitely been shattered, as Málaga announced yesterday that he is their new general manager for the next four years. He’ll start his new position in the second half of August. Is Málaga going to be our new Getafe? Fernando becomes the fourth person with a Real Madrid past to join Málaga in the past half year, after Manuel Pellegrini (and his coaching staff), Julio Baptista and Ruud van Nistelrooy. Two other Málaga players, Fernando and Sergio Sánchez, have played for the cantera.
I view Fernando Hierro as I do VDB: if he hadn’t been summarily fired from Real Madrid, perhaps the Spanish national team – of all categories – wouldn’t have been successful as it has been in the last three years. So actually, by letting these two men go, Real Madrid was making a sacrifice, giving up several years without any trophies so that Spain could benefit five years down the road. How nice and generous of them. Of course, you could view it the other way, as that Madrid might have won several more trophies if they had kept both men, and decided to pay Makelele what he was worth.
