Why Illarramendi Is Real Madrid Player Who'd Benefit Most from January Transfer

When Asier Illarramendi completed a €32.2 million move to Real Madrid in the summer of 2013, everything seemed mapped out for him to become the future leader of the Madrid midfield.

He was coming off the back of an impressive season for Real Sociedad and had just helped Spain to glory in the European Under-21 Championship in Israel.

The path seemed set. He would shadow fellow Basque midfielder Xabi Alonso, learn the ropes and then take over as and when Alonso left the club.

That plan went relatively smoothly for much of his first season in Madrid. He received solid game time in both La Liga and the Champions League and generally performed to an acceptable standard. It was clear that it would take a little time for him to truly find his feet at such a big club.

But that steady progress was severely derailed by Illarramendi’s performance in the second leg of Madrid’s Champions League quarter-final away to Borussia Dortmund. Madrid had a three-goal cushion from the first leg but found themselves two goals down at half-time against a rampant Dortmund egged on by a vociferous home crowd.

Illarramendi had struggled to deal with Dortmund’s heavy pressing and had given the ball away in the build up to the second goal. While others had also endured error-strewn halves, it was the 24-year-old who was withdrawn at the interval. Madrid held on to make it through to the last four.

Frank Augstein/Associated Press

The killer blow was delivered a couple of months later ahead of the Champions League final in Lisbon.

With Alonso suspended, Ancelotti’s decision to overlook Illarramendi in favour of Sami Khedira, in only his third appearance since recovering from a serious anterior cruciate ligament injury, spoke volumes of his lack of trust in him.

In the summer transfer window, Madrid purchased the Bayern Munich midfielder Toni Kroos. When Alonso moved in the opposite direction, it was Kroos, not Illarramendi, who stepped into the deep-lying midfielder role.

Despite a lack of experience in such a position, Kroos quickly adapted to its demands and established himself as a key member of the Madrid starting XI.

"He has aced his crash course in replacing Xabi Alonso," Ancelotti noted in an interview with Onda Cero radio (h/t Marca) in November. "He plays the same way, whatever the pressure."

Shortly after Kroos' arrival, an unnamed club director provided a succinct and trenchant comparison of two players born just a couple of months apart. Per Diego Torres of El Pais (in Spanish), the director said that the previous summer they had signed, in Illarramendi, a child; now, he said, in Kroos they had purchased a man.

While Kroos, as per J. L. Guerrero of AS, has played in 96 percent of the available league minutes for Madrid so far this season, Illarramendi has largely been confined to cameo appearances, tasked with seeing out the dying moments of matches.

It is not even a role in which he is always particularly effective. For instance, his introduction for the final 10 minutes or so of Sunday’s victory away to Getafe coincided with the home team’s most dangerous spell of the match.

If he is not getting much game time while Luka Modric is out injured, then his chances of doing so once the Croatian midfielder returns to action appear negligible.

Paul White/Associated Press

Illarramendi looks badly in need of a change of scenery, and he could indeed be offered it if reports of firm interest from Athletic Bilbao are to be believed.

Per Marca (h/t Yahoo Sports), Athletic were linked with a loan move for the midfielder towards the end of the summer transfer window and now seem keen to take him back to the Basque Country on a permanent basis.

Pablo Polo of Marca reports that Athletic are willing to pay in the region of €20-25 million in order to sign Illarramendi during the January transfer window.

Madrid are unlikely to allow him to leave without first being sure that they can complete a deal for a replacement (most likely Lucas Silva of Cruzeiro, according to Polo). With just 10 days to go until the end of the window, there is still a lot of work to be done to get two such deals signed off.

But in an ideal world that would be the best solution for both club and player. Madrid would recoup a fair proportion of their initial investment, while Illarramendi would have the opportunity to reignite his career back in his home region.

The player who shined in San Sebastian but has failed to brighten the Bernabeu could yet sparkle once more at San Mames.