Manchester City midfielder Rodri declined to engage directly with speculation linking him to Real Madrid after his side were beaten 3\u20130 by Los Blancos in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16. Speaking to Cadena SER, the Spaniard avoided a clear answer and left the possibility open.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to answer that,\u201d Rodri said in regards to a potential move the Bernab\u00e9u. \u201cIt\u2019s a moment to think about what we have now, with my team, in my season, and then we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
The context for the interest is clear in public reporting: Real Madrid have signed some of the biggest names in the sport over the last two years but have still failed to replace Toni Kroos and Luka Modri\u0107. On paper the club already had a long list of midfielders available, yet the creative void remains.<\/p>\n
Xabi Alonso attempted to mould Federico Valverde or Arda G\u00fcler into the next Kroos, but neither player could match the almost impossible standard set by the German playmaker. Alonso also tried to deploy Bellingham in a deeper role to cover the lack of creativity, but the England international was occupied with tracking back for teammates and cleaning up mistakes rather than producing magic outside his No. 10 role.<\/p>\n
Aur\u00e9lien Tchouam\u00e9ni and Eduardo Camavinga have been characterised as too defensive-minded to consistently pull the strings of the attack, leaving Real Madrid with a glaring hole in their squad. That is a vacancy the club would likely seek to fill from another team.<\/p>\n
Real Madrid have not hidden their admiration for Rodri, and previous reports suggested they hoped to use the midfielder\u2019s dwindling contract with City to acquire him at a lower cost. If the Sky Blues do not cash in this summer or next winter, they could watch him leave as a free agent in June 2027. Even worse than losing their Ballon d\u2019Or winner would be to lose him for free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rodri keeps options open amid Real Madrid links after 3-0 defeat, offering: we\u2019ll see. Transfer talk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,987,1163],"tags":[983,1064,1047],"class_list":["post-8851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-real-madrid","category-transfers","tag-agents","tag-ballon-dor-2","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}