Real Madrid and Valencia meet this Thursday in the match corresponding to the seventeenth day of LaLiga Santander, which had to be postponed due to the celebration of the Spanish Super Cup in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia). Both teams come into the duel with many needs: the whites don’t want to get out of the fight for the title after the draw against Real Sociedad; Valencia wants to get as far away from relegation as possible.
The Valencian team has experienced another black week: defeat against Valladolid in the last league game, dismissal of Gennaro Gattuso as coach and touching the relegation places. Voro González will lead the team in the Real Madrid field. It is the eighth time that he has taken charge of the team when they paint rough, dismissal or goodbye to a coach through.
The antecedents are not too positive for the Valencianists either. They have lost in their last four visits to the Santiago Bernabéu. Last season, the team led by José Bordalás fell 4-1 in a match marked by Valencia’s protests against Omar Alderete’s penalty on Casemiro that allowed Karim Benzema to open the scoring on the brink of halftime.
To find Valencia’s last victory against Real Madrid in the white stadium, you have to go back to the 2007-08 campaign when they won 2-3 thanks to a goal from Javier Arizmendi with three minutes to go that made the game good. David Villa’s previous brace. The overall balance of this confrontation is sixty-four victories for Real Madrid, fourteen draws and ten victories for Valencia.
Ancelotti recovers Tchouaméni and Carvajal for this league match. The midfielder has overcome the discomfort in his soleus that he had been suffering from since the beginning of the month, while the right-back has recovered from the muscular problems that have caused him to miss the last four games. However, he will have two safe casualties: Lucas Vázquez, due to a sprain in the union between the tibia and the fibula of his right leg; and the Frenchman Ferland Mendy, with a hamstring injury in his left leg.
Real Madrid cannot afford any more setbacks like the draw at the Bernabéu against Real Sociedad. The whites need the three points to stay in the fight for the lead. Before their league duel against Valencia, the team led by Ancelotti is second with 42 points, five behind Barcelona.
The match between Real Madrid and Valencia, corresponding to the seventeenth day of LaLiga Santander, will be played this Thursday, February 2 at 9:00 p.m. The meeting can be seen on television on DAZN and can also be followed live on the La Vanguardia website.
Real Madrid: Courtois; Nacho, Militao, Rüdiger, Camavinga; Tchouaméni, Modric, Ceballos or Kroos; Rodrigo, Vinicius and Benzema.
Valencia: Mamardashvili; Foulquier, Diakhaby, Paulista or Cömert, Gayà; William, Almeida, Musah; Lato, Lino and Cavani.
