Carlo Ancelotti announced earlier in the season on a couple of occasions that Andriy Lunin would have minutes. However, now in 2022, that announcement has not translated, for now, into a better life for the 22-year-old Ukrainian goalkeeper: he continues to play one game a year, from Alcoyano in Alcoyano.

A single match in the Cup is all he has added up to since he settled in the Real Madrid dressing room in the summer of 2020: 471 days in the shade and a night of unfortunate memory for him. This Wednesday he will start again in El Collao (21.30, Telecinco and Dazn), just like a year less 15 days ago, when he was part of the blushing costalazo that the white team took in Alcoy (2-1) against a Second B that he finished him off in extra time with one less man. Facing local hero José Juan, the goalkeeper who stopped them of all colors, Lunin received three shots on goal and conceded two goals. So far there has been no more focus for him. An enlightened Courtois and the pragmatic spirit of the Italian coach to play as little as possible – especially in goal – have ended up chronifying his substitution.

“I have told him that, due to his quality, he may deserve to play more,” Carlo Ancelotti commented on Tuesday. Three days earlier, when he announced that the Belgian was leaving confinement and would be heading to Getafe, his sentence was more absolute. “He just has the best in the world in front of him. I understand this, he and everyone understands it. But he will soon show his quality and he is sure to be successful in his career. He is very professional, ”he added last Saturday. Lunin will be the great novelty of the whites in Alcoy, where Carvajal and Bale will not be due to physical problems; Benzema, Modric and Mendy as a precaution; Jovic for the covid; Vinicius because he has just come out of the coronavirus; and Courtois for rest. The one who returns is Camavinga.

In the most delicate position for inactivity, Lunin lives in the longest tunnel. “The conditions are complicated,” admits Pedro Jaro, who was his coach in the Ukrainian national team and who during his time under the sticks also saw himself on the bench for longer than desired at the beginning of the nineties in Madrid, with Paco Buyo as the starter. . “His evolution, logically, is stagnant for not playing, but I know that he has not lowered his arms. He likes to work like no one else, all work for him is little. He is young and, as a person from the East who has been taught that, the more work, the better ”, comments the goalkeeper who also played for Cádiz, Málaga, Betis and Atlético.

Outside the Euro

Still unknown at the highest level, all the testimonies of those who have it or have been close to it coincide in the Stakhanovistic desire for this goal of 1.91 that has already passed the covid twice. “He is one of the most professional colleagues I have met,” said Dani Carvajal a couple of months ago. An endeavor that, for now, has only served him for internal praise. In Madrid he now competes against an impossible, Courtois, but neither his previous experiences in Spain on loan were great. In Leganés (six starts) and Valladolid (two in the Cup) he was also at the tail when both teams were in First, and he only found the focus in Second in Oviedo.

Since Madrid signed him in 2018 for 8.5 million euros from the Ukrainian Zorya Lugansk as part of its extensive battery of young recruits (he was 19 years old), he has barely accumulated 33 matches since the beginning: 20 in Second in El Tartiere, four in First with Leganés in 18/19, five in the first stages of the Cup and four friendlies with Ukraine. An ostracism that also left him out of the last European Championship.

His persistent substitution in Madrid contrasts with the last decade of the white goal, in which the minutes were distributed, even a lot, for very varied reasons. Due to a serious internal conflict (Casillas-Adán), due to political arrangements (Casillas-Diego López), due to injuries to the owner and appreciation of the second (Navas-Kiko Casilla and Courtois-Areola) and due to embarrassing situations for all parties (Courtois- Navas). In this sequence, Ancelotti, in his first stage at the Bernabéu, had to handle the hottest potato: the Casillas-Diego López competition after Mourinho left. And he, old fox, opted for diplomacy: the Champions League and the Cup for the first, and the League for the second. The discomfort was evident and López ended up looking for another life outside, a vacancy that a substitute Navas filled in the second course of the Italian against a new clear starter Casillas in his last season as a target.

Now, in completely peaceful waters, the distance between Courtois and Lunin is stark: the Belgian is only discussed by a false positive and the Ukrainian hardly has any scrapes left. Since Jerzy Dudek in 2009/10, a Madrid substitute goalkeeper didn’t play so little. That campaign, the Pole barely added two Cup games.

Methodical and analyst of himself to the extreme, when he returns home, this day of Reyes Andriy Lunin will be able to review the times his party needs in Alcoy after a year analyzing other colleagues.

You can follow EL PAÍS DEPORTES in Facebook Y Twitter, or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.