Girona

Villarreal

Real Madrid

Osasuna

Barcelona

Athletic Bilbao

Cadiz

Real Sociedad

Getafe

Betis

Celta Vigo

Almería

Regular Season

Atletico Madrid

Valencia

Alaves

Sevilla

Las Palmas

Rayo Vallecano

Mallorca

Granada

La Liga

Courtois picks up injury on international duty -- for how long he could be out

Relevo

 has picked up an injury while on international duty with Belgium.

From the first tests carried out, the goalkeeper suffered a minor strain in the adductor.

He is already heading back to Madrid for further medical check and treatment.

According to the fresh report from Relevo, the injury is not serious and Thibaut will be ready to start against 

What's so special about Courtois' goal-kick routine? More & more teams will do it — explained

There was a time goal kick was just a chance to lump the ball forward as a rugby-adjacent ‘playing for territory’ tactic. Goalkeepers simply kicked the ball to the opposition end for both sides to wrestle over.

However, these days, this set piece has become an opportunity for teams to build an attacking play from the back. Goalkeepers are crucial. They act as the 11th outfield player and usually begin the process by passing the ball to the closest defender.

 have a unique way of doing theirs this season -- a defender takes the kick to the goalkeeper who in turn finds another defender.

 takes a short goal-kick by passing it to 

 who then passes the ball to one of the full-backs or centre-backs. By doing this, Madrid maintain unpredictability and gain numerical superiority.

Take the conventional goal-kick routine: a goalkeeper passes it, say, to the left centre-back. A high-pressing opposition then immediately commits to that side of the pitch.

But at Real Madrid, after Militao has played the ball to Courtois, the opposition has no way of knowing whether Thibaut will pass it to the left (

) or centre (one of the defenders or midfielders).

If you've ever played FIFA or PES you've probably done this routine, too: passing it back to the keeper after a goal-kick. It turns out it's not just a silly thing (unless you dribbled past the opposition team with your keeper) but a real strategy that gives you a slight advantage in build-up.

There's also a bit of paradox here, a risk 

 is willing to take: Courtois is not ideal at ball distribution but the coach trusts him to make this second pass which is more like the first pass.

Of course, Courtois booted the ball forward instead of playing it from the back but even in this case we gained an advantage -- by playing it short at first, we attracted more players to our area meaning that there were fewer 

 players in the middle to fight for the ball.

Since more and more teams are looking for effective ways to get out of the press, we should expect other teams to involve their goalkeepers and start their build-up like this.

Player		G
Artem Dovbyk	Girona	19
Alexander Sørloth	Villarreal	17
Jude Bellingham	Real Madrid	17
Ante Budimir	Osasuna	16
Robert Lewandowski	Barcelona	16

Courtois picks up injury on international duty -- for how long he could be out

Latest news