Jose Mourinho has one start to show for Endrick at Real Madrid this season, and his solution for the next ten days is to hand the player over to somebody else.
“I want Endrick to play. If Ancelotti plays him in this international break, I will be happy,” Mourinho told reporters after Real Madrid’s 3-0 win at Valencia on Saturday night, according to Tribuna.
The Ancelotti in question is Carlo Ancelotti, Brazil’s head coach since leaving Real Madrid, and the man Mourinho replaced at the club in the summer. He named a 28-man squad for friendlies against Japan on 14 November and Singapore three days later, with Endrick listed alongside Vinícius Júnior among the forwards, the Brazilian federation confirmed.
One start, long stretches on the bench
Endrick’s season at the Bernabéu has barely begun on the pitch. He had logged ten minutes in the league, as a stoppage-time substitute against Elche, before his breakout night in a Champions League tie at Roma in mid-October, where he came on in the 59th minute, scored and assisted in a 4-3 win, and was named player of the match, Yahoo Sports reported.
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Mourinho has blamed a muscle and tendon problem picked up in pre-season for the slow start, along with the state of the games he could have brought Endrick into. The explanation has not translated into a regular role: Kylian Mbappé is Real Madrid’s first-choice centre-forward, and the Brazilian has largely slipped in behind him in the pecking order.
Ancelotti’s youth push suits the ask
Mourinho’s request lands with a coach already tilting Brazil’s squad towards the next generation. Ancelotti called up nine players of Olympic age and 15 under the age of 23 for the Asian tour, TheScore reported, a tilt that lines up neatly with a request to give a 20-year-old forward minutes against Japan and Singapore.
The optics of a Real Madrid head coach publicly campaigning for one of his own players to get national-team minutes are unusual on their own. That it is Ancelotti on the other end, after years of the two coaches circling the same clubs, is the part that will travel.
What happens after the break
Real Madrid return to league action against Celta Vigo at the Bernabéu after the international window closes. Mourinho has already blocked a suggested January loan move to AC Milan, and his public line this week was that Endrick has the quality to be a Real Madrid player and should stay. Whether that quality earns him a second start before Christmas is a question Mourinho answers himself.
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