AS<\/a>“, sources close to Real Madrid’s coaching staff say Ciria will get minutes over the course of the long season.<\/p>\nThe report added: “His presence in Austria was not merely a symbolic gesture. Under the plan set out for him, playing a leading role with the Castilla side will be the norm, but seeing him with the first team from time to time will not be an exception.”<\/p>\n
It continued: “Mourinho admires his natural talent. He is beginning to become one of his favourite players.”<\/p>\n
Mourinho shows no mercy across these three weeks, a semi-official warm-up for the new campaign. His demands spare nobody, not even the youth-teamers.<\/p>\n
Alexis, though, prepared himself well for whatever came his way. Once last season ended, he took just one week off, a complete physical and mental break.<\/p>\n
By the eighth day he was back in training, working under his personal trainer, David de la Hera.<\/p>\n
Determined not to miss out, Ciria knew the departure of the World Cup players would open up his chance to shine.<\/p>\n
Vin\u00edcius, the undisputed starter in his position, was handed an extra week of holiday. That gave Ciria his opening, and he seized it at exactly the right moment.<\/p>\n
Then came the final stroke of luck, in the most prized form of all: the goal against Fiorentina.<\/p>\n
Ciria is flying, and his future looks bright. Keep this up and force his way into the first team, and Real Madrid will owe a few payments. Given the Badajoz native’s talent, they look like a bargain.<\/p>\n
Play one official match with the first team, at least 45 minutes, and Real Madrid must pay Sevilla 120,000 euros. Ten such matches would push the figure past a million, to 1.2 million euros to be precise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 Mourinho appears open to keeping winger Alexis Ciria in Real Madrid’s first-team squad next season, promoting the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23952,24371,1414,82,83,24372,265,2420],"class_list":["post-64791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-club-friendlies","tag-fiorentina","tag-j-mourinho","tag-madrid","tag-real-madrid","tag-real-madrid-vs-fiorentina","tag-transfers","tag-vinicius-junior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}