Thibaut Courtois suffered a rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in early August 2023 and had to undergo an operation on his right knee in mid-March 2024. He returned to the Madrid group on Monday, present in Munich for the semi-final first leg of the Champions League. Real coach Carlo Ancelotti is counting on a return from Courtois for the next championship match against Cadiz, Saturday (4:15 p.m.), between the two C1 semi-finals.
But Courtois has maintained cold relations with Italian-German coach Domenico Tedesco since June 2023, upset at not having been named captain of the Red Devils in a match against Austria after the injury to Kevin De Bruyne. It was Romelu Lukaku who wore the armband.
The goalkeeper, who had alienated part of the Belgian locker room, announced in December that he was giving up on the Euro due to his left knee injury. “On this theme, everything has already been said. I don’t want to play ping-pong. I am in tune with that,” Tedesco explained in a roundtable discussion with German media.
