Pre-Game Presser and News Round-Up
Injury and Call-up News:
Pipita is officially back and made it into Mou's list of 19 called up for tomorrow's game against Real Sociedad. Marcelo and Albiol, though still injured, have been showing improvements and both have made short appearances in regular training with the ball again. The mothership has been suspiciously reticent about releasing injury reports, so no news on how long Pepe and Coentrao are out for. (Although unofficially, Pepe is said to be out for a month, at the least.) Sergio, of course, misses out due to suspension, having picked up 5 yellows over the course of the season.
To make up for our depleted number of defenders, Mou has called up Llorente (no, no, no that Llorente) who is 19-years old and plays for Real Madrid C. Llorente is a flexible central defender that can essentially play every position in the back line. According to the mothership, his hero is Sergio Ramos. Look at the little nugget.
Full list of players called up:
Porteros: Casillas, Adán y Jesús.
Defensas: Varane, Carvalho, Arbeloa, Llorente y Nacho.
Centrocampistas: Xabi Alonso, Khedira, Özil, Essien, Modric, Callejón, Di María y Kaká.
Delanteros: Cristiano Ronaldo, Higuaín y Benzema.
Press Conferences and Mou Cracks the Whip:
The club seems to have taken a 180 in terms of press handling, allowing the press access to player press conferences after practices for the first time in...wow, it feels like actual years. (Not counting the mandatory CL press conferences, of course.) First there was Iker, then Cris, then Sergio, and finally Arbeloa. To be honest, none of them really said anything terribly interesting, just towed the party line and talked about how they all have to work harder in 2013. As we all know, Mou ended the holiday vacations quite a bit early and purportedly used the extra training time to work every drop of sweat out of the boys to whip them back into shape.
Today, it was Mou's turn in the press room as he talked about his goals for the team in 2013, the goalkeeper controversy, and whether he will attend the Ballon d'Or ceremony on Monday. (Spoiler alert: He's not going.)
Click to viewQ: Iker or Adan tomorrow? Iker won best GK in world award today...
MOU: "Even the players themselves don't know who will be in goal tomorrow. The only thing I can tell you is that whoever plays tomorrow will not be playing on Wednesday [against Celta in the Copa]...All of the positions are based in confidence. Not just the goalkeeper, confidence is fundamental for all the players. Normally, confidence translates into results. But in the same regard, I believe that competitiveness is an aspect which is no less important and we will be looking to find this point of equilibrium between confidence and competitiveness which will bring out the highest level of performance from the players. To be in a permanent comfort zone, I think, is not good for the players. My players and my goalkeepers are always the best. When I trained the little Leiria, in Portugal, the people laughed when I said that my players were the best in the world, that my goalkeepers were the best in the world. It has always been this way and it will not change now. My goalkeepers are the best in the world."
Q: Pipita back = yay, y/y?
MOU: "There have been a lot of games with only Benzema. His return is important for the competitiveness between the two strikers, because they improve each other and both are important players for the team. Higuain means goals. He is another player, one that has goals and can contribute to the team which is 'constructing' a lot but not scoring as many goals as it has been before. It is great news."
Q: League impossible, you give up now??
MOU: "I am going to play in the league exactly as if we were leaders or just behind the leaders by a few points. Without thinking about [resting players for] other competitions, I will think about game by game. I will not treat the league as a testing ground or use it to give rest to anyone. We will approach the games with the demand to win that Madrid has, fortunately, because I can't see myself working without this level of demand and requirement. We have the responsibility to win better results in the league."
Q: 2013 goals?
MOU: "I want to win every game we play in 2013. And every game which we do not win will be a signal to us that we still need to improve more. I don't enjoy living in a comfort zone. I am never comfortable, much less when we have not win the results which we wanted. I want to work this week to try to hide the limitations we have, knowing that it will be difficult because the opponent (Sociedad) arrives here in a completely different mindset, having achieved better results than they'd expected so far in the league, whereas we have not met our expectations in the league. In the end, we will tally the accounts and we will be here to accept the responsibilities for the good and the bad."
Q: Plan ticket to Zurich booked yet?
MOU: "No, I will not be going. I have to work, I have an important Copa game on Wednesday that I need to prepare for."
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