One question, one sharp answer
Mixed zone, Saturday night, at Real Madrid. Thibaut Courtois has just scraped past Espanyol. Rodri comes up.
The Spanish midfielder had been linked with a move to Madrid. Instead, he has signed for Barcelona. The Belgium keeper could have swerved it. He did the opposite.
“Every player chooses where he wants to be. If he didn’t want to be with us, that’s a pity for him. In the end, he’s a great player, but he made his choice and that’s that.” The quote has been doing the rounds on Spanish social media since Sunday.
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The hotel detail
There was a second angle to the question. According to Mundo Deportivo, Rodri and João Cancelo briefly stayed at the same hotel as Los Blancos.
Courtois didn’t bother pretending it was nothing. “Was he in our hotel? Well, he’s tall, there must have been a lot of people there too, and that’s it.”
Translation: move along.
What it says about the Madrid dressing room
Real did not exactly cruise on the pitch on Saturday. They won. But the Espanyol victory was a slog, and the club has had a messy start to the season behind the scenes, with Jose Mourinho back on the bench and the endless debate around Vinicius Jr.
In that atmosphere, a former Manchester City man who ends up picking the Catalan rivals is bound to rub people up the wrong way. Especially with the Rodri saga taking up a big chunk of Madrid’s summer.
Courtois has been in Madrid since 2018. He knows the weight of words in that dressing room. If he answered like that, it was almost certainly no accident.
The reply may come in a few months, in the Clasico.
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