Real Madrid star Thibaut Courtois has declared that much of what they showed in their Club World Cup debut against Al-Hilal had its roots in the previous management. Los Blancos played out a lacklustre 1-1 draw with the Saudi Arabian giants, and new manager Xabi Alonso was also keen to emphasize that he had had little time to work with his new side.
There were debuts for Trent Alexander-Arnold and Dean Huijsen, with varying degrees of success, while Kylian Mbappe missed out due to a fever. Real Madrid were outplayed in the first half though, even if they controlled the game more in the second half, which was more to the liking of Alonso.
Courtois, who is known for his straight talking, was critical of their performance, but stressed that they were very much in the initial phase of transition under Alonso.
“We’ve been with Carlo for four years, we’ve got our routines, and now we have to change them to what the new coach wants. We still have the automatisms from Carlo and the movements we had to do. It’s not something that can be changed in four days; it doesn’t happen immediately. We’re watching videos and talking a lot. We’ll learn from this game, and things will improve in the future.” he told Cadena SER, before describing the penalty given away by Raul Asencio as ‘stupid’.
“In the first half, we lacked rhythm on the ball. We needed to play faster and look more between the lines so we wouldn’t have to run so much after the ball in this heat. We played better, despite not having great chances, and we’ll go into Sunday’s game with the same idea.”
On Alonso’s style of play, Courtois mentioned that he ‘had his own way of playing, a different way of attacking and defending.’ Alonso also recognised to Marca that it would take time for his side to absorb the concepts he was trying to install.
“We’ve been here for nine days with just three training sessions, and this is a process. We have the demand for results because we’re in a competition, but what we also want is to learn and figure out what we want to be.”
“We’re trying to do different things, obviously, but you can’t do everything in four days… After spending four years doing things with another coach because the old automatisms still remain.”
