Defending champions Real Madrid host Pako Ayestaran’s UD Las Palmas to the Santiago Bernabeu tonight in match week 11 of the La Liga.
For this tie, Zinedine Zidane will be without the likes of Raphael Varane, Keylor Navas and Mateo Kovacic, as they continue their recovery programs. As per Real’s official site, none of them trained with the main squad in the final training sessions and hence, will not feature.
Zidane confirmed in his press conference that Dani Carvajal and Gareth Bale have returned to training. “Dani is doing well, he’s training as usual. Gareth has now completed a second training session with the group and the process is following its normal course.”
The Frenchman went on to say however, that neither will feature in the squad list as they are being eased back into action after the international break. He also revealed that Bale, like Cristiano Ronaldo, wouldn’t be travelling with his side for national duty in the upcoming break.
Having lost two consecutive games, Zidane was asked whether he would consider a change of formation, to which he replied that while his side are capable of playing in many different formations, it doesn’t change the main goal of going out there and trying to win.
He said,”We’re capable of playing in a lot of different ways and using different formations, but that doesn’t change what we’ve got to go out and do on the pitch. It doesn’t depend on the system and I’m not going to go changing things just because we’ve lost two games. We need to win tomorrow and we’ll have to see how we’re going to try and do that.”
So we will likely see the exact same or a largely similar starting XI that started that 1-3 hammering against Tottenham. They remain his strongest starting XI and having served him so well prior to those two losses, it is unlikely that Zidane will lose faith in his men so soon.
