‘Camavinga left-back?’: how luck led to Real Madrid’s new dimension

I t wasn’t the first time that necessity proved the mother of invention, and it won’t be the last that what was meant to be a stopgap turned into more than a stroke of luck – and, in a not so distant future, may even be seen as a stroke of genius.

Had Lucas Hernandez not been injured in France’s first game at the 2022 World Cup, Eduardo Camavinga would not have played at left-back for Les Bleus against Tunisia and Argentina later in the tournament.

Similarly, had Ferland Mendy and David Alaba not been unavailable for a Real Madrid La Liga fixture against Real Sociedad in late January of this year, it is unlikely Carlo Ancelotti would have imitated Didier Deschamps and deployed his 20-year-old midfielder in a position Camavinga knew very little about until six months ago – a position in which he gave such a brilliant display in the first leg of Real’s semi-final against Manchester City that a madridista paper gave him 10 out of 10 in its ratings, regardless of the misdirected pass which led to Kevin De Bruyne’s equaliser.

No one would have predicted this back in November. Deschamps’s decision had taken everybody by surprise at home. He had tested his young player at left-back in a warm-up friendly against the Qatari side Al-Gharafa and been pleased enough to field him there again when France, already qualified for the last 16, met Tunisia in their final group game. It was not a resounding success. Tunisia won 1-0 and Deschamps was fiercely criticised for his choice. The former Marseille coach Rolland Courbis thundered on national radio: “Camavinga left-back? Why not the physio?” It was one thing to deploy Antoine Griezmann as a deep-lying regista, quite another to ask a youngster with four caps, all as a central