Jese Rodriguez will celebrate his 22nd birthday on Thursday, but while he is unlikely to be short of gifts, there is one present that he would cherish above all others: First-team football at Real Madrid.
This time last year, the young forward was in the midst of a hot streak. He scored in consecutive league starts against Villarreal, Getafe and Elche, and produced a goal and a man-of-the-match performance in the 3-0 Copa del Rey victory over Atletico Madrid.
There was even talk of him forcing his way in Vicente Del Bosque’s World Cup squad.
His momentum was, however, brought to a swift halt by the anterior cruciate ligament injury he picked up in Madrid’s 3-1 win over Schalke on March 18. It would be some six months before he would return to the pitch.
His comeback came in the second leg of Madrid’s Copa del Rey tie against Cornella at the Bernabeu on December 2. He replaced Sami Khedira in the 57th minute and went on to score the fifth goal in a comfortable 5-0 victory.
It was a strong return to action but one that he has been given little chance to build on in the following months, receiving, as per Soccerway , just 233 minutes of action across 11 subsequent substitute appearances in all competitions—an average of around 21 minutes per appearance.
As noted by J. L. Guerrero of AS , even Asier Illarramendi, in whom Carlo Ancelotti appears to have little confidence, has played 428 more minutes of football than Jese since that night at the Bernabeu.
It would be fair to say that Ancelotti has shown little proclivity for the rotation so far this season. Per Soccerway , Toni Kroos has missed just 175 of Madrid’s 2790 minutes of action in league and Champions League play, while Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, Karim Benzema and Marcelo have each started in over 80 percent of the club’s 31 matches in the same two competitions.
The fact that all three of Madrid’s regular front three are included in that list speaks to the task facing Jese if he hopes to secure more first-team football during the remainder of the campaign. Even with Gareth Bale producing a number of fairly average performances, the Canary Islander has received few opportunities to impress.
Jese came off the bench in place of the injured James Rodriguez in the 27th minute of Madrid’s 2-1 victory at home to Sevilla at the start of the month but found himself relegated to the bench for their next fixture despite scoring what proved to be the decisive goal of the match.
Having worked so hard to recover from such a serious injury—“I had a very tough time,” he admitted to FIFA.com in December—it is perhaps unsurprising that he allowed his frustrations to boil over when he was called upon to make a substitution appearance in the dying minutes of Madrid’s 2-0 victory over Elche last weekend.
Per H. Cerezo of Marca , Jese was aggrieved after spending much of the second half warming up, only to be denied an opportunity to make any sort of impression on the match. He made his annoyance clear to assistant coach Fernando Hierro, as evidenced by footage from Cuatro (in Spanish), as he readied himself to enter the field.
Benzema, the player he replaced and someone he has a good relationship with, made an attempt to calm him down, while Hierro and experienced defender Alvaro Arbeloa both had a word with the young forward upon the final whistle.
“I’m the one who decides who plays in every game, regardless of who is recovering,” Ancelotti affirmed afterwards, as per Inside Spanish Football.
El Confidencial (h/t AS ) reported on Wednesday that Jese could seek a loan move away from the Bernabeu in search of first-team football next season.
The attraction is clear. He need only look at Denis Cheryshev, who is flourishing at Villarreal, or Alvaro Morata, who has impressed since his move to Juventus , and think that he, too, could be making similar waves given more game time.
But the rise of prominence of Isco offers an alternative path for the young forward. A year ago, Isco was himself struggling for minutes. But he kept his head down, worked on the weaker areas of his game and took such advantage of his opportunities when they came that it is now difficult to imagine this Madrid side without him.
Whichever route he takes, one thing is clear: By the time his 23rd birthday rolls around, Jese Rodriguez will want to be playing a much more prominent role than the one afforded to him over the last couple of months.
from Bleacher Report http://ift.tt/1LIvT5j
via IFTTT February 26, 2015 at 04:20AM
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