When Zinedine Zidane was named as the new Real Madrid manager, again, there was immediately talk of which players would benefit and which would lose out.
The main beneficiaries were thought to be Keylor Navas, who has already replaced Thibaut Courtois between the sticks, Isco and Marcelo.
Marca suggest that Brahim Diaz is another, although that could be from a viewpoint of things not being able to get much worse.
Diaz had a Manchester City contract expiring in the summer and initially it was thought he’d join Real Madrid then, on a free transfer.
However, the player and Madrid were keen to get the deal done in January. Competition was put forward as one of the reasons, but that didn’t make a great deal of sense given he could have signed a pre-contract agreement anyway.
Another reason for an early deal was that Diaz didn’t want to spend the rest of the season getting no minutes at Manchester City.
So Madrid paid a fee which could rise to over €20m with add-ons, and the player hasn’t received any minutes since January 16th.
Marca say that since the transfer, Diaz has ‘fallen into oblivion’, and Zidane now has the task of sorting the situation out. He included the 19 year old in his first squad at the weekend, and it’s accepted the player is ‘not at his best level’, due to a lack of football since the Manchester City exit.
