Six starters for three seats
The situation
Carlo Ancelotti finds the hottest line in midfield when it comes to making up his eleven this season. The longevity of the Holy Trinity (Modric is the oldest player in the squad and Kroos the third), the signing of Tchouameni and the progression shown by Valverde and Camavinga make the midfielder the line with the most open competition (up to six players , the aforementioned plus Casemiro, with a clear profile of aspiring to ownership) in this Real Madrid 2022-2023 where the challenge of the Sextete will redouble the demand. 62 games await the whites if they fight to the end for the six competitions in which they will take part… Casemiro will be faced with an unknown situation for him in recent times. The 30-year-old Brazilian had not only been the undisputed starter, but also lacked a specific replacement that Ancelotti will now have with the arrival of Tchouameni. And despite that lack, Carletto dispensed with Casemiro longer than his predecessors on the bench. The player from São Paulo came from being the outfield player with the most minutes in the white ranks in three of the previous four seasons.
The details
Last season he was fourth in the ranking, behind his teammates Militao and Vinicius and Alaba.Accustomed to playing all the games he started (Zidane only changed him in eight of the 95 games he started in his second spell), Casemiro instead saw how last season Ancelotti took him off the field early in almost a third (14) of his 46 games as a starter r. The signing of Tchouameni, 22 years old and whose signing cost 80 million euros, will accentuate this tendency to give the Brazilian more breaks. Those who are more used to rotations and can see how this season they become a more pronounced phenomenon for them are Luka Modric and Toni Kroos. The Croatian, who will turn 37 on September 9, was the player Ancelotti replaced the most times last season . Of the 40 games that he started as a starter, the Italian changed him in 26, the same as Vinicius, but the Brazilian played seven more games than the Balkan and left the field later. Modric’s changes were on average in the 79th minute and Vini ‘s , in the 88th minute.