to start off your week…

Madrid returned to training on Monday, with the incorporation of Ricardo Carvalho (hopefully, none of the drama from the Portuguese national team will affect Madrid.  AS reports that Mou spoke to Carvalho after the session.  Also of note: Ricky arrived at Valdebebas in the car of Ricky (Kaká)).  That brought the total of first teamers available for José Mourinho to boss around to a grand total of six.  Perhaps that’s why eight canteranos were also present at the session – Jesús, Mandi, Lucas, Merchán and Óscar Plano from Castilla, and Suárez, Edu Payá and Molero from RMC.  Alberto Toril watched the session from the sidelines.  Other international players who don’t have commitments today or didn’t play yesterday (Özil, the Portuguese) are expected back today.  There will be a session and a press conference, where José Callejón will speak.

Oh, and the next Real… interview – and this season’s premiere – will be Pepe, this Thursday at 22h on RMTV!  And Nuri Sahin is on twitter!  So far, he’s promised to return as soon as possible just like he’s going to learn Spanish, and given us this picture of him wearing hipster glasses.  And thanks to “big Álvaro” (Arbeloa) for letting us know!  Would Morata be little Álvaro?

Other bits and pieces:

– I posted this on the other blog, but it’s worth re-posting here, in case you don’t read the other one.  On Sunday, the Spanish national team’s trained at Las Rozas, and our boys decided to share the experience with us.  Álvaro Arbeloa tweeted this picture of Xabi, saying, “this is how Xabi warms up before the training session” (by the way, the magazine Xabi is reading is El País Semanal, which I also read on Sunday, and where Xabi once appeared).  Some time later, Iker posted this picture of a shirtless Raúl Albiol and Álvaro Arbeloa huddled together, plotting to take that picture of Xabi.  I like how Xabi is glancing up at them like, “those kids…”  Iker wrote, “before training, with these two characters taking a photo of Xabi…”  It was also Raúl Albiol’s birthday, so Sergio and Álvaro tweeted photos with him!

– and Juanín Mata posted another photo from the lunch on Saturday, this time with just him and his best friend Esteban Granero.  I’m so happy they found each other, because footballers with their skills AND level of intellectual capacity are probably far and few between, yet they managed to find each other.  Let’s all be grateful to Castilla.  I imagine if Xabi Alonso were a few years younger, he’d be very good friends with these two.

– in an astonishing move that surprised everyone, the LFP announced the dates and times for all the Liga jornadas (4-6) for the rest of the month!  Before, the LFP would only announced the dates and times a week before the actual matches.  The LFP said they’re doing this to make it easier for fans, teams, the media and the public to plan their schedules around the games.  Does that mean they didn’t care about all these entities for the longest time?  Not surprising.  Anyway, they also said they’ll try to make a habit of this for the rest of the season “whenever possible.”

That means that Madrid’s next three games, corresponding to jornadas 4, 5 and 6, are against Levante at 20h on Sept. 18, against Racing at 20h on Sept. 21 and against Rayo at 20h on Sept. 24.  Three games in seven days, and all at the same hour (I guess Madrid makes too much money to have them put in the Asia slot).

– and I love these photos of Ronaldinho playing with Marcelo’s hair from their training session on Sunday!  Yesterday in London, Brazil beat Ghana 1-0 in a friendly in which Marcelino played the entire game.

– to end, a cute picture of Juan Carlos and Nacho from yesterday while they were on international duty.  Spain’s U-21 team beat Georgia 2-0 in Lugo (behind two goals from another familiar name, Sergio Canales) in a Euro 2013 qualifier.  I like how David Mateos wished Juan Carlos and Sergio good luck, and later congratulated Sergio for his goals.