On Saturday (9.30 p.m., LIVE! at kicker) Real Madrid will start the new La Liga season after a partly mixed summer preparation. In the difficult away game in Bilbao, however, regular keeper Thibaut Courtois will not be between the posts as expected.
As the Champions League semi-finalist announced last season, an examination of the Belgian diagnosed “a tear in the anterior cruciate ligament in the left knee”. Undoubtedly a shock for the Royals, who currently only have the Ukrainian Andriy Lunin as a representative in the squad. Courtois, who sustained the injury in Thursday’s morning session, is set to undergo surgery in the next few days.
It is hard to imagine that the royals will start the new season with Lunin as the first or even the only keeper. In the coming weeks, Real is likely to participate in the goalkeeper carousel, which is already spinning fast this summer.
Hard to find an equivalent replacement
An equivalent replacement for Courtois, who had often represented a kind of life insurance for Real in the past (keyword CL final 2022), will hardly be found. The 102-time Belgian national keeper, who recently announced that he wanted to end his career at Real (contract until 2026), came to the Spanish capital from Chelsea in the summer of 2018.
In five years with Real, Courtois won the Spanish league twice, the Copa del Rey once, the Supercoppa twice, the Champions League once, the Club World Cup twice and the UEFA Super Cup once. In the past four seasons, Courtois never made fewer than 31 La Liga appearances for Los Blancos.
It will be exciting to see what happens next for the two-meter giant in the Belgian national team. At the end of June, Courtois sharply rejected statements by his national coach Domenico Tedesco – and indirectly accused him of lying. Belgium is currently seven points behind leaders Austria (10/one game more) in the European Championship qualifying group F.