Having lifted the ultimate prize in European club football at Wembley in June, Real Madrid’s 2024/25 UEFA Champions League campaign will open on Tuesday evening as los Blancos welcome VfB Stuttgart to the Santiago Bernabéu.
Carlo Ancelotti spoke with the media on Monday, with injury concerns coming as the main topic of conversation after the Italian expressed his discontent with the revamped league phase format.
What did Carlo Ancelotti say?
Though Real Madrid’s victory on the hallowed turf of Wembley Stadium came just a little over three months ago, much has changed since Dani Carvajal and Vinicius Jr guided los Blancos to victory over Borussia Dortmund.
“We’ve lost [three] important players in Nacho and [Toni] Kroos, and Joselu too,” Ancelotti admitted during his pre-match press conference on Monday. It was Kroos’ decision to retire from professional football that guided much of the narrative heading into June’s UCL final, and the Real Madrid boss expressed that the midfielder “can’t be replaced.”
Elsewhere, Ancelotti confirmed that Jude Bellingham is set to return from an injury absence, as are Aurélien Tchouaméni and Eder Militão.
“Militão needed more time to recover and that’s why we thought we’d give him an extra day’s rest. He’ll be 100% available tomorrow,” added the Italian.
Real Madrid have been plagued by something of an injury crisis throughout the opening stages of the season, although Ancelotti was steadfast in his belief that there is nothing the club to improve the situation.
Embed from Getty Images“We’ve been looking for the problem, but it’s not in our hands. The schedule is too demanding. A new competition comes along and you don’t know how it’s going to go. It might be more entertaining than last year, but for the time being, we have two more games,” he bemoaned.
“If the governing bodies and decision-makers don’t think that players get injured because they play too much, we have a problem. I would ask them to think about reducing the number of matches in order to have more attractive competitions.”
Despite openly criticising the new format of the UEFA Champions League, which sees teams play eight games in an all-new ‘league phase’ as opposed to the six-game group stage of years gone past, Ancelotti believes that his side are amongst the favourites to retain the trophy.
“The format changes, but it’s always the same teams [as favourites], including Real Madrid. There are others. Some people think we’re favourites because we won last year, [but] this year’s Champions League will be a different story and hopefully we can get to the final like we did last season.”
Real Madrid’s 2024/25 UEFA Champions League campaign opens on Tuesday at 20:00 BST [21:00 CEST] as they welcome VfB Stuttgart to the Spanish capital. You can follow the match action on FromTheSpot.