• Zidane "No one is to blame for Sergio's injury: neither the national team nor him"

Real Madrid have not lost a game since January 30.

On a strange afternoon at Di Stéfano, Zinedine Zidane's team fell at home against Levante: 1-2.

It was a moment of crisis, an alarm signal before the key weeks of the season.

Two months after that, the Madrid team has overcome the knockout round of the Champions League against Atalanta and has regained distance with respect to Atlético, leaders of the League with four points of advantage over Barcelona and six over the whites.

Ten games in which Madrid have won eight and drawn two, and in which only four footballers have started 100% of the time: Thibaut

Courtois

, Ferland

Mendy

, Raphael

Varane

and Nacho Fernández.

"He always complies," repeats Real Madrid on the homegrown defender.

And it is that in those ten games, Nacho has played 90 minutes in all and has not dropped from 6 as a final note in each appointment, according to the statistics website

Who Scored

.

7.51 and 7.13 in the round trip against Atalanta, his best nights, and a consistency that has convinced Zidane during Sergio Ramos' absence due to injury.

Now, with the captain back in the infirmary - "no one is to blame, they are football things," the coach summed up - Nacho will once again enjoy responsibility in the most important week of the merengue season.

After today's duel against Eibar will come the first leg against

Liverpool

(Tuesday 6), the classic against Barcelona (Saturday 10) and the return at Anfield (Wednesday 14).

Three dates in which Nacho will do what he has been running for a decade: put patches.

And put them right.

Next April 23 will mark the ten years since Nacho's debut with Madrid's first team.

It was in Mestalla, in a 3-6 where

Mourinho

gave him the opportunity that he had been looking for for another ten years.

"Mourinho gave me everything," he has said on several occasions.

He entered La Fábrica in 2001, at the age of 11, and twenty years later he has completed an excellent career as a rotation and club man that still has no end.

After two leagues and four Champions League, the Madrid leadership adores him, the fans adores him, the coach adores him, his teammates adore him ... Because the most 'abnormal' in Nacho is that he is "a normal guy", they insist on Valdebebas .

A normal guy in the middle of the biggest club on the planet.

He does not live in a millionaire house in La Finca, but in Alcalá, his corner of a lifetime with his longtime girlfriend.

There he has his friends, his family and runs with his brother

Álex

, a footballer from Cádiz, the NAF football academy, located in the school where they were children.

Contract until 2022

Nacho's contract ends in June 2022 and, as

Lucas Vázquez

is doing

, he will want to see what the market says about him.

Meanwhile, he will spend free time with his three young children, take a bike ride through the Alcalá natural park or delve into a historical novel, his favorites.

And on the weekend, to the grass: he is the 11th player with the most minutes in the squad despite the muscle injury he suffered at the beginning of the season and having tested positive for coronavirus, and he is on his way to square another season as a perfect man of rotation.

He played 13 games in 12-13, 19 in 13-14, 22 in 14-15 and 15-16, 39 in 16-17, 42 in 17-18, 30 in 18-19, 10 in 19-20 and has already been 20 in the current one.

A regularity that was twisted for the first time in March 2018, when he left the grass in tears for the first injury of his sports career.

But in the Ciudad Deportiva they insist on the youth squad's work ethic, learned by the responsibility of those who must be alert to their diabetes from the age of 12.

"He always works, always serious," Zidane recalled recently.

A ligament injury took him off the field of play last year and Covid-19 forced him to isolate himself at the beginning of this year, but he returned in time to act as a vital patch in the lowest hours of Madrid.

It always complies.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • sports

  • First division

  • Real Madrid

  • soccer

LaLigaHigh tension between Bordalás and Escribá: "Not even the Titanic sinks me"

LaLigaAnother casualty for Zidane: Mariano falls and Real Madrid is left without '9'

LaLigaBarcelona once again believes in La Liga

See links of interest

  • 2021 business calendar

  • Alba Berlin - Valencia Basket

  • Bautista - Sinner, live

  • Fenerbahce Istanbul - Barça

  • Real Madrid - Olympiacos, live

  • Levante - Huesca