The team will be hoping to take all three points from the Nuevo Los Cármenes to remain in the hunt for the league title
With everything still to play for.
It’s the first of three cup finals in the battle for the LaLiga title, and nothing but three points will do if the team is to remain in contention. The path to victory will be a repeat of the attitude on display on Sunday: a refusal to give in until the final moment.
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The aim in Granada will be to take maximum points and the first step in the right direction during a hugely demanding week which sees Madrid face another tough away trip in three days’ time, when they head to San Mamés to take on Athletic.
The team are in good shape in LaLiga, unbeaten in their last 15 games, while they’ve come out on top in their last 11 against Granada, 5 on the road.
“Granada are having a great season and they’re a very good team”, said the Real Madrid coach.
Zinedine Zidane spoke to the press from the press room at Real Madrid City after the last training session before the game against Granada (Thursday, 10pm CEST):
“Firstly, I agree with you. Granada are a very good team with a coach who is doing brilliantly with his team. It’s another difficult game for us tomorrow, but we’re aware of that.
We know that we have to be at our best in every game we play, at 100%, from the first minute until the last. The opposition want to play well against us and we’ll try to go out and get the three points”.
“We’ve got three games left. We’re focussed on tomorrow’s game first and playing the way we’re playing. The players want to play good football and we’re going to try to do that tomorrow. We’re going to compete and do all we can to win the game. That’s all that matters to us.
We’re going to give it our best shot, whatever happens. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but I can tell you that we’re going to give everything out on the pitch to try to win this league. We’ll see how it turns out in the end”.
The coach will be without Ramos, Varane, Carvajal, Lucas, Marcelo and Mendy in the squad, but Hazard, does make the cut, fresh from netting the equalising goal against Sevilla. Indeed, the Belgian opened his goalscoring account for Real Madrid against none other than Granada last term.
The madridistas’ opposition are sitting in tenth place in the table on 45 points. Granada have enjoyed a fantastic season, making it into the Europa League quarter-finals, despite losing three of their last four LaLiga fixtures. The goals for Diego Martínez’s men are spread between Soldado (9), Jorge Molina (5), Darwin Machis and Luis Suárez (4).
