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This feels like a good day to distract ourselves from [gestures in general direction of outside world] … so let’s check in on the latest events at Real Madrid. Have they finally found dressing-room harmony? Ah. Eek. Oh boy. Two statements from the club on Thursday revealed an “incident in the first-team training session” involving midfielders Federico Valverde and Aurélien Tchouaméni, with the former suffering “head trauma”. It’s now emerged that Valverde needed stitches after a second altercation in as many days with his teammate. After a full and frank exchange of views in Wednesday’s training session at Valdebebas, Valverde then accused Tchouaméni of leaking news of that exchange, resulting in an unseemly tussle where the Uruguayan fell and hit his head on a table. We can only imagine that poor Álvaro Arbeloa, who had just popped out for morale-boosting bocadillos, walked back in to find everything on fire, like Donald Glover in that Community episode.
Real Madrid are on their darkest timeline this season, with zero trophies collected, a systemic rebuild under Xabi Alonso quickly shelved, and the very real prospect of handing Barcelona the league title in Sunday’s clásico. Months of speculation about dressing-room discord have now come to a head. The Valverde incident arrives days after the knacked Kylian Mbappé drew heat for taking a romantic getaway in Sardinia, not long after a reported bust-up with a coach back at Valdebebas who had the temerity to flag him offside. An online petition calling for Mbappé to leave Real Madrid has received – and you’ll like this – 32 million signatures. The French forward, who can point to 41 goals in 41 games this season as a counter-argument, instead issued a half-hearted statement which can be neatly summarised as “Kylian: it was really nothing”.
