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Thibaut Courtois overcomes injury, spotted training at Real Madrid

Real Madrid CF 

 players who travelled to represent their country are back in training for the club. 

 was spotted training with the team despite returning to Madrid with an injury he picked up playing for 

Apparently, Courtois is back to full fitness and will play against Valladolid on Sunday. 

Another welcome sight in training today was that of 

. The Austrian has not played for Real Madrid since picking up an injury against Liverpool on February 21. 

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

Thibaut Courtois overcomes injury, spotted training at Real Madrid

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