Carlo Ancelotti has Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Champions League and sitting on a ten point lead at the top of La Liga. Yet that hasn’t stopped him from being criticised for his lack of rotation.
The Italian veteran has been fairly bullish when it comes to switching up his team, in particular when it comes to the old guard of Casemiro, Toni Kroos, Luka Modric and Karim Benzema.
The numbers show that the established starting XI are accompanied by five substitutes in Ancelotti’s plans, but that the remaining nine of his 25-man squad are not trusted.
Youngsters Miguel Gutierrez and Antonio Blanco have understandably had less minutes, as is the case with substitute goalkeeper Andriy Lunin.
The star-studded bench of Gareth Bale, Eden Hazard, Luka Jovic, Marcelo, Isco, Mariano, Dani Ceballos and Jesus Vallejo have more or less been forgotten about.
As SPORT point out, only Hazard has participated in more than 20 of Madrid’s matches this season. Even so, in terms of actual game time this amounts to less than ten full matches.
Jovic (17 matches), Isco (14) and Marcelo (14) are the players who have appeared most out of the others. As is the case with Hazard though, in terms of minutes this adds up to 3.1, 3.8 and 6.3 full matches respectively.
Bale has missed 25 matches through injury, while that figure lies at 24 for Ceballos, which softens the harshness of these numbers in their cases.
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