Rafa Benitez reiterated Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema are staying at Real Madrid and predicted a bright future for the team based on pre-season form.
Madrid dismissed Tottenham Hotspur through goals from James Rodriguez and Bale in their first Audi Cup match and, speaking after the 2-0 win, the Coach discussed a number of his players as well as the team as a whole.
“The forwards are free to move between positions as we try to exploit their mobility with maximum movement,” he said, Marca reports, when asked about Bale’s new, more central position.
“What we want to do is to get the team better physically, and also improve their accuracy [in front of goal].
“As I’ve said in the case of Karim, where there is a lot of speculation, I’m not interested, I only want to concentrate and everyone is staying here.
“[Isco’s performance] doesn’t change his status because we already had a high regard for him. It confirms what we already knew, that he is a very good player.
“Going in to the season, Ruben Yanez is one of our goalkeepers. [Fernando] Pacheco will go out on loan.
“Manuel Llorente will train with [the first team] and play with the B team, and the third group are [Borja] Mayoral, [Marco] Asensio and [Martin] Odegaard.
“We have to evaluate them and decide what to do, decide what is best for them and for the club.
“Whatever we did [against Tottenham] was to do with the type of tournament. Two matches in two days [Madrid next face Bayern Munich] is unmanageable unless you have 22 players all at the same level.
“Changes are made to handle the group we have as well as possible. [Toni] Kroos is important because he has a lot of quality.
“The team is stronger, more compact, very quickly. We’ve been in Australia and China, where we couldn’t train a lot, and the balance is positive because we’ve really only been playing, almost without training.”
