Why Martin Odegaard Should Learn from Real Madrid Example of Dani Carvajal

Martin Odegaard has this week been criticised for his desire to continue training with the Real Madrid first team—a right stipulated in his contract, as per Frederic Hermel of AS—in lieu of integrating more readily with his team-mates in the B team, Real Madrid Castilla.

The implication is that Odegaard would rather spend time admiring the ball-striking technique of Cristiano Ronaldo, the movement of Luka Modric and the ball skills of Isco than knuckle down and establish himself as an important player for Zinedine Zidane’s B side.

And the result is that Zidane has elected to leave the 16-year-old on the bench for each of Castilla’s last two matches. While it would seem churlish to castigate Odegaard for wishing to uphold the terms of his contract, there is certainly a degree to which he should be open to compromise.

Indeed, if he wants to make the most of his natural talents and forge a long-term future for himself in Madrid, he would be best served to follow the example of a less glamorous member of the current first-team squad: Dani Carvajal.

The Leganes native is, alongside Iker Casillas, one of just two "cantera" (youth team) graduates in the current starting XI. However, unlike that of the goalkeeper, his ascension to the first team has been far from smooth.

Manuel Queimadelos Alonso/Getty Images

Carvajal joined the club at the age of 10 and worked his way up through the ranks to Castilla. After two seasons with the B side, for whom he served as team captain, he was expected to move up to the first-team squad ahead of the 2012-13 season.

However, Jose Mourinho did not have confidence in the young full-back, and he was instead sold to German side Bayer Leverkusen.

Undeterred, Carvajal worked hard, kept his head down and quickly established himself as a regular at the BayArena. Following a season of buccaneering displays in the Bundesliga, Madrid exercised their buy-back clause to re-sign him a year later.

His path to a regular place in the starting XI was still not set. Carlo Ancelotti had to be convinced of his talents—“I didn’t know him, he’s surprised me,” he said in July 2013, as per Alfredo Relano of AS—and Alvaro Arbeloa still stood between him and a consistent place on the teamsheet.

But again he applied himself fully to the task at hand. After sharing right-back duties with Arbeloa last season, he has been the regular first choice in that position during the current campaign.

Carvajal has never had a big-money price tag or wonderkid status attached to him. He has forged his own path to the Madrid first team through sheer grit and determination.

“I don’t want to be an example for anyone,” he said following his return to Madrid in 2013. “But I want to encourage the youngsters to keep working every day, because making it to the first team is every academy player’s dream.”

Andres Kudacki/Associated Press

Odegaard’s circumstances are slightly different, but he should still take heed of Carvajal’s story. It is likely that many of his Castilla team-mates, and players further down the development chain, share Carvajal’s will and desire to become a Madrid regular.

It could even be that the details leaked this week came from the mouth of an agent of a disgruntled Castilla player, keen to portray Odegaard in a bad light. Just as it could be the case that someone elsewhere within the club felt that Odegaard needed to be taken down a peg or two.

Very little of the information distributed by the Madrid press comes without some sort of agenda attached to it.

Bleacher Report columnist Guillem Balague certainly feels that the story has been overblown. He is adamant that it is not illustrative of an overriding issue with Odegaard’s commitment to making the most of his obvious natural talents.

“There is no problem with the attitude of the player at all,” he told B/R’s Ryan Bailey on Tuesday (see video below). “My understanding is that it is just a warning in terms of how he is performing and relating to the team.”

Indeed, it is the sort of reproach that is routinely handed out to youth-team players who are losing their way a little. This particular case has only received such attention because Madrid invested so much time and effort in signing the young Norwegian.

Odegaard has only just turned 16 and arrived in Madrid on the back of a whirlwind tour of some of the world’s top clubs. It is only natural that it will take him some time to adjust to a new club, a new culture and a new language.

There is certainly a degree to which he and his father have encouraged the scrutiny that he now faces. If quiet and steady development had been their primary objective, a club like Ajax would surely have been a better fit. But even so, it is unfair to place such importance on each and every little scrap of information that surfaces during his early days in Madrid.

It is impossible to know exactly what the future holds for Odegaard. But this week he has learned a valuable lesson about how closely his progress will be monitored and analysed by the Madrid press.

If he wants to make a success of himself in the Spanish capital, he needs to keep his head down, work hard and prove through performances rather than reputation that he is worthy of a place in the Castilla first team. The path has been set by Carvajal; Odegaard just has to follow it.

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