Karim Benzema would not have played if Real Madrid's Champions League round-of-16 first leg with Liverpool was on Saturday, says head coach Carlo Ancelotti.
Ancelotti ruled out Benzema from featuring at Osasuna in LaLiga this weekend as Madrid look to chase down leaders Barcelona, who currently hold an eight-point lead.
Benzema missed the World Cup with France with a thigh injury, and he was also absent for Madrid's league defeat to Real Mallorca and the Club World Cup semi-final victory over Al Ahly with a muscular issue.
The Ballon d'Or winner did then play and score in the Club World Cup final against Al Hilal and netted twice against Elche in midweek.
Madrid appear to be managing Benzema with a focus on big matches, but Ancelotti insisted on Friday he would not have been able to call on the striker the following day regardless of the opposition.
The European champions visit Liverpool in their next match on Tuesday.
"If the match were against Liverpool tomorrow, I wouldn't play him either," Ancelotti told reporters. "We prefer not to risk him.
"He's a bit tired, like many players, it's true, but he's coming back from an injury, so it's different.
"We hope he will be there by Tuesday."
Ancelotti acknowledged Benzema's advancing age contributes to the requirement for extra precautions to be taken to ensure he is fit and available at the business end of the campaign.
"After the World Cup, he has done very well," the Madrid boss added. "He has scored in almost every game.
"He is not injured. We simply prefer, due to his age, to give him rest. And that way he will be well for the rest of the season."
Madrid bounced back from the 1-0 loss at Mallorca with a 4-0 thrashing of Elche, but with Barcelona winning 11 of their past 12 league matches, Ancelotti knows his team must carry on taking maximum points to keep up with the rampant pace Xavi's men are setting at the summit.
"The goal is to get [the gap] to five points for the moment," Ancelotti explained. "The calendar is demanding, with important matches, and we want to keep the good feeling.
"We're good, but we can improve even more, and we're going for it. In football, you can go from the best to the worst in no time, and vice versa."
Gareth Southgate knows Euro 2024 must go ‘very, very well’ to keep England job
Gareth Southgate knows next year’s Euros will have to go extremely well for it to be a “possibility in anybody’s eyes” for him to stay on as England manager.
The 52-year-old was parachuted into the hotseat following Sam Allardyce’s ignominious exit in 2016 and has gone on to oversee the national team’s best spell since winning the World Cup.
England reached the 2018 semi-finals before losing the delayed Euro 2020 final in an agonising penalty shoot-out defeat to Italy at Wembley.
There were more signs of progress as the team were edged out by France at last year’s World Cup, but a challenging year meant Southgate had to weigh up whether to see out his contract until 2024.
The England boss decided to stay on after a week of contemplation following Qatar, but next summer’s European Championship could prove his last finals in charge.
“My contract is until the December,” Southgate said. “That was always put in place because it would allow everybody reflection time, really.”
Asked if the Euros would be his last tournament, Southgate said: “Who knows?
“I think we’ll have to go very, very well for that to be a possibility in anybody’s eyes and that’s fair enough. I’m more than comfortable with that.
“My aim is to try and win the tournament and everything I do is geared around that and every conversation I have with the players now is geared around that.
“So, what will happen in the future at the moment it isn’t at the forefront of my mind, but trying to win this European Championship is.”
England are third favourites with the bookmakers to triumph in Germany next year, and that is all the manager is focused on right now.
‘Succession’ is a buzzword thanks to the popular US TV series, but Southgate has not seen the show and was unwilling to talk about potential candidates for a job he cares deeply about.
“Whatever (input) John (McDermott, Football Association technical director) and everybody else at the FA would like, really,” he said.
“I’m not precious about it. If I could help in any way, at whatever point. I try to do that now with involvement in the pro licence, with reaching out to English coaches.
“We’ve had people in to have the odd day here and there with us at training.
“That’s not my decision but I’d always help English football as much as I can.
“At whatever point I leave here, hopefully we’ve won something, but if I’m the second most successful I’ll be more than happy to become third very quickly.
“I joined here to help English football and that will never change for me.”
England’s immediate focus is taking a giant stride towards Germany by beating Malta and North Macedonia in June, but for a number of players their future is up in the air.
Harry Kane, Declan Rice and Jude Bellingham are subject of widespread speculation, while a lack of game-time is an issue for Southgate’s favourites Harry Maguire and Kalvin Phillips.
“There’s potentially a lot of movement with that squad we’ve picked across the summer, but I think it will be later in the summer,” the England boss said.
“It doesn’t worry me how it plays out. I think as a player you always back yourself. You’ve got to.
“You’ve got to have the mentality that ‘wherever I go I’m going to force my way into the team’ until such point as which it becomes apparent where ‘maybe I’ve got to go’.
“And maybe we’ve got a couple in the squad who’ve got that decision to go through in their own minds this summer.”
That self-confidence has paid dividends for Jack Grealish, who struggled to make the desired impact in his first season at Manchester City.
But the 27-year-old has come on leaps and bounds this term under Pep Guardiola, who Southgate considers the best coach in the world.
“I’m a huge admirer,” the England boss said. “He knows that, I’ve told him.
“Of course it’s been brilliant for our players to work with him and they have learned individually, tactically and, probably as much as anything, that mentality.
“You mention Jack, he’s played properly, I would say, in this period. You know, against Real Madrid with and without the ball.
“That wasn’t the case two-and-a-half years ago, if I’m honest, so there’s been a lot of progress.”
Rob Edwards relieved to hear skipper Tom Lockyer is doing okay after Luton win
Rob Edwards’ delight at Luton ending their 22-year wait for Premier League football was nothing compared to the relief he felt at the news captain Tom Lockyer was all right.
Saturday’s Sky Bet Championship play-off final went the distance at a packed Wembley, where the Hatters rallied after their skipper’s worryingly collapse early on.
Jordan Clark put Luton into a deserved lead that Coventry midfielder Gustavo Hamer cancelled out in the second half, with the match ending 1-1 after 90 minutes and extra-time.
Joe Taylor saw a winner ruled out just before spot-kicks, with Fankaty Dabo’s sudden-death miss sealing a 6-5 shoot-out triumph that propelled Luton back into the top-flight for the first time since 1992.
The dramatic triumph means the Hatters will welcome Manchester City and Co just nine years after facing the likes of Salisbury and Hyde in the Conference Premier.
Luton boss Edwards said: “I felt a bit numb. I just made sure I shook Mark’s hand and his staff.
“I don’t want to be that guy that just starts running off and celebrating before I’ve seen the other manager.
“I just felt very numb. I still do. It hasn’t sunk in quite yet. It might take a few days, but it’s great. It does feel good.
“It was mixed because of Locks (Lockyer), that’s why I couldn’t really go for it celebrating.”
This is a day that will live long in the memory of anybody connected to Luton, whose players held a Lockyer shirt throughout the celebrations.
The Hatters captain collapsed when running back to defence in the early stages of the final, leaving the field on a stretcher and being taken to hospital for tests.
Luton confirmed Lockyer was “responsive and talking to his family”, with his dad posting an image of him in a hospital bed celebrating the shoot-out win.
Edwards cried with delight when he saw that image and hopes to soon celebrate with the much-loved skipper.
“If we can we will (see him in hospital),” he said of Lockyer, who is expected to be kept in overnight. “But I don’t want to get in the way and if I’m not allowed then I won’t.
“If I’m allowed I would love to go and see him, but then I think we’re so tight as a group that I’m not sure if 40-odd people are allowed to go and see him in hospital.
“We will have to check on that, but I’m just so thankful that he’s OK because that’s all that matters.
“I wasn’t really able to enjoy any celebration at the end because all I cared about was Locks.”
As for Coventry, it was a heartbreaking end to a memorable season.
Bottom of the table in October and taken over at the start of the year, boss Mark Robins was agonisingly close to leading the Sky Blues from League Two to the top flight.
“Firstly, congratulations to Luton because once the game is over and done with you’ve got to congratulate the winners,” the long-serving Coventry boss said.
“They’ve come out on top today, however tight the game may have been.
“Congratulations to them and their supporters. I think they have been outstanding all season and good luck to them moving forward.
“I think for us, certainly the opposite of their joy is pain.
“You certainly feel a bit of pain, but once that pain starts to dissipate in however long it takes for it to go, we’ve got to reflect on what an unbelievable achievement it’s been just to even be here today in a play-off final.
“The division is very, very tough as we all know and unfortunately we couldn’t make that next step.”
LaLiga accused of 'inadequate' handling of 'disgraceful' racist abuse towards Vinicius Junior
LaLiga's handling of the "absolutely disgraceful" instances of racist abuse towards Vinicius Junior has been "completely inadequate".
That was the message from Kick It Out chair Sanjay Bhandari after Vinicius was subjected to more abuse by sections of the crowd at Valencia's win over Real Madrid last Sunday.
Valencia's punishments for the incident were reduced on appeal, with the partial closure of Mestalla Stadium cut from five matches to three and their financial penalty also sliced.
Bhandari, chair of the organisation aiming to eradicate racism from football, says the Spanish Football Federation and LaLiga president Javier Tebas have failed to support Vinicius.
"I think the treatment we've seen of Vinicius has been absolutely disgraceful," Bhandari told Stats Perform at the Football Business Awards.
"It's 10 or 11 games, it's not just this last weekend, it's been happening over the course of the last two seasons.
"The response of the Spanish authorities has been completely inadequate and it's actually been worse than inadequate because it's made the matter worse.
"The way Javier Tebas, who runs LaLiga, responded trying to blame Vinicius and treating him as if he's a problem when actually he's the victim… it's really sort of going back 30 or 40 years."
Tebas was a vocal critic after Vinicius labelled LaLiga racist, the league's president criticising the 22-year-old for "not informing himself properly" before subsequently apologising for those comments.
The incident – and Tebas' reaction to it – sparked widespread condemnation of LaLiga and Spanish football's relationship with race, with Bhandari calling for further action on the issues.
He added: "They need to get on with taking more concrete steps to kick discrimination out of Spanish football, it's not acceptable to have whole stands of fans doing monkey chants.
"Making monkey noises and shouting monkey to Vinicius, that's totally unacceptable and there shouldn't be any deflection and making excuses for that kind of behaviour, which is what we have seen.
"They need to get on it and if that means closing the stand, that's a good step. We welcome that and fines are a move in the right direction.
"But if it doesn't stop that should move to points deductions and further sanctions."
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