The situation
Eero Markkanen, who played for Castilla 2014-15, although he was away for almost half the season, was fired after returning with 18 extra kilos from the summer… The histories of Real Madrid and Finland have practically not coincided throughout history. The European Super Cup will be the white club’s first visit to Finland and no player from the country has worn the first team shirt. Although there is a precedent in the reserve team, and quite recently: it was Eero Markkanen, a striker who played for Castilla… just one season. Madrid made an important bet on Markkanen, paying 2.2 million to AIK Stockholm to strengthen its subsidiary, which had just dropped to Second and wanted to return to the silver category. But the passage of the 197-centimeter striker for the white team was brief and not very memorable.
Saved by Zidane
It was in the summer of 2014 when he signed, precisely with Ancelotti heading into his second season on the bench. But his performance was poor (two goals and one assist in ten games and just over 400 minutes) and he played his last game for whites on January 11; from then to the end of the course, he was not summoned again by the subsidiary’s coach, who at that time was a certain Zinedine Zidane. And in August 2015, at the turn of the summer, Madrid terminated his contract arguing that he had appeared for preseason with 18 kilos more. The player denied it in networks pulling irony (he uploaded an image of his face artificially fattened with one of the effects of the mobile camera), but his career never fully recovered. Markkanen, whose brother Lauri plays for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, went through Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Indonesia and the USA before ending up at HIFK Helsinki, where he plays today : six goals in 18 games so far.