Ancelotti: "Casillas will start tomorrow"

After winning the UEFA Supercup against Sevilla last Tuesday, Real Madrid start their quest for the second trophy of the season against Atlético de Madrid. Our coach cleared some doubts about the team a day before the first leg of the Spanish Supercup. And yes, as everyone was expecting, the starting goalkeeper for tomorrow's game was announced:

I have not decided the starting lineup yet, but Casillas will be a starter tomorrow.

This does not mean, however, that Iker Casillas has already been chosen to be a regular starter at Real Madrid's goal, as Carletto remarked when he was asked about that:

We play tomorrow and on Friday, and the lineups will be different. The goalkeeper in both games might not be the same, although I'm not really thinking about Friday's game right now. We are focused on doing a good job tomorrow.

There were more questions regarding Alonso, Di María, Kroos and James, but our coach gave no clues about them being starters tomorrow:

Di María is our player right now, he is training well and he is ready to help the team. As of today, he is a Real Madrid player, and we will treat him accordingly. He may have some minutes tomorrow, perhaps as a starter or coming from the bench. I have still not made up my mind completely about tomorrow's lineup, so I will not say anything else about it.

James is a great player. We saw him playing as a left central midfielder against Sevilla, and I would like him to get used to that position, but for now we are just trying. He can surely do fine in all positions upfront.

Kroos is a also a great player. His signing has brought a lot of quality to our midfield and, together with James and Keylor, makes us stronger than we were last season. Now we need to work hard to obtain good results.

Ancelotti also commented that, in principle, he is not willing to change the system, because it worked well last season, although he reckons there may be some changes for particular games in which the team will take a different approach.

Radio Marca's reporter Antón Meana asked about the purely sporting criteria that made Real Madrid decide to keep Casillas and sell Diego López, but our coach denied that there had been any:

We did not decide to sell Diego López or Casillas, nobody spoke about that. Diego López decided to leave the team because he found a good opportunity in Milan.

Off-topic (but not quite): For those of you who use Twitter, our coach will be answering your questions in a few minutes, at 13:30 CET (see widget below for your local time), at the hashtag #AskAncelotti. Give it a try!

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