The situation
Raúl González Blanco’s Real Madrid Castilla gets off to a good start tonight with the dispute of its first minutes in the friendly match of the preseason. The Madrid subsidiary has been working in Valdebebas since July 12, under the orders of the white legend, who will be accompanied on the bench by Marcos Jiménez (assistant coach), Alberto Garrido (assistant), Alain Sola (physical trainer), Mario Soria (goalkeeping coach), Víctor Paredes (retrainer) and Luis Gutiérrez (performance specialist). It will be a 2022-23 season with extra pressure for all of them, especially for Raúl, who faces it as the last bullet for him in Castilla to achieve the long-awaited promotion to the Second Division, where the pearls of the white quarry can be hardened to professional level.
The details
In his first season at the helm of Castilla, 2019-20. Raúl could only reach seventh place in the group; he was harmed by the break caused by COVID-19, although the whites never finished settling in the leading group. After that experience, he briefly took charge of a youth full of great promises (Latasa, Arribas, Miguel Gutiérrez, Blanco, Peter…) to conquer the Youth League. There the name of Raúl took on special relevance, he began to be seen with future options in the first team. But the last two seasons have not finished confirming the omens: in 2020-21 he managed to enter the promotion phase and got a ticket for the play-off, but there he collided with an Ibiza that he could not damage at any time in the match . And in 2021-22 Castilla was a drifting team in too many moments and failed to get past tenth place in Group II of the First RFEF. Very little for a group that was already accumulating experience and for which quality is presupposed. However, at Real Madrid they have proposed to give Raúl a team of guarantees to try, once again, promotion to Second. The white club is trying to retain all the key pieces of the squad that the coach has requested, despite the fact that all these players have offers from professional football, in Spain and abroad. Starting with Arribas and Dotor, the first and third top scorers in the reserve team last year, with 15 and 10 goals respectively. Raúl considers both vital and has requested that they stay; The club has told both of them that the project promises to be the great agitator of the First RFEF in 2022-23 , which can enhance their options to qualify for a place in the first team. The same happens with Latasa, the Castilla striker, who scored 13 goals last year. He is in preseason with the first team at the moment in the United States and, despite the fact that his initial desire was to leave, he has seen that Ancelotti has him in his head, which could tip the scales.