Real Madrid Prepare For Elche Without Bale
Real Madrid trained on Tuesday (September 24) without Gareth Bale ahead of their La Liga match at lowly Elche on Wednesday (September 25).
With the derby against Atletico Madrid looming next weekend, manager Carlo Ancelotti will not be risking playing Gareth Bale who picked up a minor injury at the weekend, especially as the goals are flowing for Cristiano Ronaldo and Isco who already have eight between them.
Newly-promoted Elche have yet to win this season in La Liga and after five matches have three points and stand one place above the bottom team Sevilla. Real Madrid, on the other hand, have won four and drawn one of their five matches and stand in third place behind Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, but Ancelotti does not expect Wednesday's game to be easy.
"Every match before the game we have to stay focused, we have to stay concentrated... of course we have to consider that we have more quality but if you don't use the same motivation, the same character than the other team it will be difficult," Carlo Ancelotti told reporters on Tuesday.
The Wales winger picked up a minor muscle problem in the warm-up before Sunday's (September 22) victory against Getafe and was withdrawn from the starting line-up as a precaution.
Ancelotti dismissed a reporter's suggestion Bale had been rushed into action too quickly after his pre-season preparation was disrupted by the drawn-out negotiations over his move to the Spanish capital.
"Gareth Bale hasn't had anything special, he has had a little problem. He started training yesterday, today he trained apart from the rest of the squad and I think he will be ready for Saturday with no problem. He won't be available tomorrow," Ancelotti said.
Following the controversy about whether it was good or not for Real Madrid to sell midfielder Mesut Ozil to Arsenal, Ancelotti acknowledged that while Ozil is a great player, Real Madrid do not have a problem without him.
"Ozil is a great player, we have said it... he has great offensive quality, passing, to open the opponent's defence. I think that in those two games that we played without Ozil we didn't have any scoring problems."
Presented by Adam Justice
Read more: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/508636/20130924/spanish-la-liga-live-stream.htm