Carlo Ancelotti has joked these days about the entertainment he finds in the discussions about the goalkeeper he would choose for the final against Dortmund. He intended to extend it until this Saturday. But it didn’t last that long. Lunin did not land this Thursday afternoon in London on the Real Madrid expedition. A flu B has kept him from training with the group for four days, separated so as not to spread the virus. In reality, Ancelotti’s thing with the goal was just that, entertainment.
What the coaching staff had seen from Courtois in Valdebebas and in the four games in which he was tested left them no doubt. He was faster and stronger than he was before tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee on August 10 of last year. In recent training sessions, according to a source with access to the sports city, he has even made some saves at the level of his incredible night in the 2022 final against Liverpool in Paris. “He had 12 hands,” Klopp recalled a few days ago in one of his last talks with journalists before leaving the bench. “It was because of that bastard Courtois,” he said of that defeat.
Part of that higher speed point comes from the work he did sitting down, with virtual reality glasses. The ligament was not the only complication, as he recalled in an interview in Ace: “I was unlucky enough to have my meniscus stitched, which means you can’t walk for six weeks. It takes a little longer to begin full recovery. You can’t flex more than 90 degrees through the menisci in three or four months.”
But they found a shortcut in an old rival of the Belgian who had gone through something similar. Former goalkeeper Urko Pardo, trained at La Masia from cadets to the reserves and nationalized Cypriot, faced Courtois in 2019 in a Cyprus-Belgium (0-2). He had broken his cruciates twice before. “I know it’s hard to come back,” says Pardo; “the distances, the shots, the sensations…”. When he retired he began working on a cognitive training project for goalkeepers with virtual reality, the company MentisVR. Last year he completed a success story with the Hungarian goalkeeper Balazs Megyeri, from Debreceni, who had gone through the same thing: “When he came back he was mentally faster than before the injury. In the close shots, in the death passes… Sometimes he sends me videos of his saves and tells me: ‘Look, this is virtual reality.’
The glasses place the goalkeeper on the field, surrounded by players, and expose him to increasingly complex game situations. “It allows you to train actions at speeds that do not exist, and acclimates the brain,” explains Pardo. The theory goes that, back on the grass, at normal speeds, everything is easier.
The day Courtois returned to play, against Cádiz at the Bernabéu, he left a set in which he seemed especially activated. Chris Ramos goes towards the goal alone, Courtois comes out, parries the shot with his body and immediately starts chasing the ball to the sideline. His pass is the first of a counterattack that ends in 1-0.
Although when he found out he was back it was 10 days later, against Alavés: “I needed a game like today, with a lot of shots. Against Cádiz there was a one-on-one and a long shot. Against Granada, more footwork and little stopping. And today, many stops. I’m not saying that’s where he hesitated, but he did need those close, fast shots, reflexes… ” Pardo understands this differential point: “The mind is what dominates everything. Speed, strength, everyone has it. But in decisive moments it is the mind that tips the balance.”
Not only has he gotten back faster. “I have gained muscle mass in my upper body and legs, to protect my knees,” she said in Ace. There is a lot of work away from the pitch, many hours on Davide Violatti’s physiotherapy table, and many with the readapter Giuseppe Bellistri to get closer to the field, where Luis Llopis, the goalkeeping coach, was waiting for him.
All that background work helped reduce the setback he suffered in March when he was about to return, the torn meniscus in his right knee. “At the time I had a very bad time, but that night I told the doctor that it would be better if it had happened to me at that moment than three or six months later.”
That inner strength has been decisive, according to sources who have followed the process closely: “He believed in him a lot. “It was him.” And here he is back for his third Champions League final, after Lisbon in 2014, where he missed Ramos’ header in the 93rd minute; after especially the nine stops in Paris. Just in time: the first fallen of this Madrid of resistance, so hit by injuries, and despite everything one step away from another European Cup.
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