The list of players called up for Real Madrid’s fixture was released on Monday night ahead of their clash against Club Brugge on Tuesday at Santiago Bernabeu and the obvious omission of two important part of Zidane’s squad has left a lot of people wondering.
Gareth Bale and James Rodriguez who had been on the transfer list this summer still remained at the club because of lack of convincing offers for either of them.
Gareth Bale who had joined the Spanish side from Tottenham in 2013 for a then-record of €100.8m has had constant rumors and controversy around him over his failure to finally settle in the Spanish capital over the last seven seasons.
James Rodriguez on the other hand had been on a loan with Bundesliga giants, Bayern Munich where he has performed well but he just returned to Real Madrid and Zidane isn’t so keen on giving him play time as he has attempted to offload him this summer all to no avail.
The commission of the two bright players has had people talking and one could only guess their below-par performance over the weekend against Atletico Madrid in the derby might be another reason for making them sit this one out.
On another hand, while Club Brugge aren’t the toughest opponent Real Madrid would be facing this Champions League season, it is not safe to say they can’t cause an upset, taking a win by chance over Real Madrid.
With Eden Hazard yet to deliver on his mega-money move from Chelsea as a replacement for Ronaldo who had been a goal machine scoring 450 goals in 438 games for Real Madrid (as per Transfermarkt), Zidane needs all the men he can get to fill up his ranks and strengthen the club.
Although the Real Madrid boss has insisted that his side can return to their very best without Ronaldo but that future looks a little bit blurry with the disappointing performance from his replacement over the past months.
“I’m not going to talk about Cristiano’s history now, what he did here, we all know how important he was,” Zidane had said in his pre-match conference according to Marca. “Do we need to adjust now? Yes, with our current players, we want to keep doing the same things, not to change our ways, the DNA of this club, which is at least to work up a sweat.”
Conclusion
In recent times, the Real Madrid boss might want to build on the capacity of the players he has at hand before dreaming on building a better team with the ones he’s yet to get. It is a known fact that almost all the players in Real Madrid current squad are world class and with the right work put in place, the team can definitely get better and even best it’s previous records.
