Although the team has been struggling on the pitch for quite some time, Real Madrid had a particularly calamitous last season, when their problems transcended the pitch and penetrated into the dressing room as well.
There were several indications of this phenomenon, but the most prominent of these came late in the season, as news emerged of a dressing room fight between two important players, Federico Valverde and Aurelien Tchouameni.
However, this episode already seems to be a thing of the past. The two players have already played and celebrated their team’s success on the pitch together this season. In fact, as Diario AS has reported, one of these players, Tchouameni, appeared in an interview with The Bridge and outright denied that there was a physical altercation between him and the Uruguayan:
“People talk a lot, but there was no fight between Valverde and me. Yes, it’s true that things happen in the dressing room, but we never fought. In a dressing room, there are indirect remarks and things like that, but I never got into a fight with Valverde.
It’s true that something unpleasant happened. The only problem with all this is that it’s Real Madrid, and anything, no matter how small, gets blown out of proportion and becomes a massive media circus. Something that wasn’t necessarily a problem ends up becoming one.”
The Real Madrid midfielder believed that such disputes were common in any dressing room:
“Afterwards, everyone called me to ask what had happened and whether I was all right. They want to know what happened, but these days you have to be very discreet. To reassure people, I had to tell them that nothing was wrong. I once watched an NFL documentary, and these things happen very often there.”
For now, Tchouameni assured that there are no problems between him and Valverde, and went on to indicate that their relationship might even be better than before:
“If you walk into the dressing room today, as Mourinho said, you’ll see that Valverde and I are fine. There’s no problem between us. There’s no problem on the pitch either; life goes on. In fact, these kinds of things can bring you even closer to the other person. We’re fine, and we have no problems with each other.”
The signs that the two players have gotten over their differences were already there, but these statements from Aurelien Tchouameni only go on to confirm this. Hopefully, Jose Mourinho will be able to keep the dressing room environment healthy and eliminate all the other problems that plagued that team last season.