Spain’s Dean Huijsen has begun to rediscover his form and prove he deserves the trust of Jose Mourinho. Last season the 21-year-old Real Madrid centre-back drew sharp criticism. Now he starts the new campaign as a key member of the squad.<\/p>\n
Clear inconsistency dogged Huijsen’s first season at Real Madrid, despite the club paying 50 million euros to sign him from Bournemouth. He started as a regular under Xabi Alonso before his role gradually shrank under Arbeloa, until he fell out of Luis de la Fuente’s calculations for Spain’s World Cup squad.<\/p>\n
The Malaga-born defender made ideal use of pre-season, though. He took the number 4 shirt and nailed down his place in the starting line-up, becoming, alongside Thibaut Courtois and Kylian Mbappe, the only player to feature for every minute against Espanyol, Real Sociedad and Malaga.<\/p>\n
After the big win over Malaga, Mourinho praised Huijsen’s level and confirmed the young defender is heading in the right direction, despite some errors in his passing.<\/p>\n
Real Madrid’s manager said: “Huijsen lost a through ball, but he was dominant in duels and defensive cover, and this is the right path. I admire defenders who defend well, and if a defender is good with the ball then that is ideal, but the most important thing is defending, and he is improving in this aspect.”<\/p>\n
Mourinho added: “I have seen notable progress in the last three matches, and his team-mates Rudiger and Konate are giving him support.”<\/p>\n
Building play matters to the Portuguese coach, but he does not rate it as the most important factor. Strength, stability, the ability to win duels and giving the team confidence come first.<\/p>\n
Attention now turns to Real Madrid’s next match against Real Betis, scheduled for Friday 4 September at the La Cartuja stadium. It is a tough test for the Whites after three consecutive victories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain’s Dean Huijsen has begun to rediscover his form and prove he deserves the trust of Jose Mourinho.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[17880,1414,85,82,83],"class_list":["post-78218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-d-huijsen","tag-j-mourinho","tag-laliga","tag-madrid","tag-real-madrid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78218","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=78218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}