In an place of work on Calle Serrano, Madrid, Oscar Ribot is scrolling via a video on his telephone, pausing it on the level the place Carlos Henrique Casemiro’s boot rolls excessive of the ball and into the shin of Southampton’s midfielder Carlos Alcaraz. Saved in a WhatsApp crew referred to as ‘CasesRed,’ it is without doubt one of the photographs he and his group mentioned the usage of to problem the four-game ban the Brazilian gained after being despatched off.
Manchester United determined to not attraction, which is why the video games at the calendar at the table are struck via. Until it reaches Thursday.
After virtually a month absent, Casemiro shall be to be had to play once more, towards Sevilla. On Sunday, towards Nottingham Forest, he’ll go back to the Premier League. Alcaraz, who had requested to change shirts a couple of mins ahead of the Brazilian crashed into him, was once amongst the ones providing comfort, however there was once none. Casemiro left the pitch at Old Trafford in tears.
“Taking football away from Cases is like taking food from his table, it’s like he can’t live, can’t breathe,” says Ribot, whose Best of You agency represents the midfielder. “He wakes up thinking about football and goes to bed thinking about football. He watches hundreds of games: any team, any league. I’ve seen him watch Chinese games because there is always some detail. He says he won’t be a coach, but he will. He’s already one in a footballer’s body. This month, he’s watched everything, calculating the points needed and the days left.”
It is not a situation Casemiro has been used to. The joke about forgetting to pack his invisibility cloak alongside the shin pads, hyperbaric chamber, electric recovery boots and all those medals almost writes itself, but he didn’t find it funny. In a decade at Real Madrid, Casemiro didn’t receive one straight red. Although there have been two double yellows he’s had no direct reds anywhere, remarkable for a defensive midfielder as tough. And then this. It took 583 games for him to get his first and just five for him to get his second.
“I trust the refs, but both were definitely not red cards,” says Erik ten Hag. “Everyone who knows football, when you play at the top level, knows it’s not a red. [If it was]players would be off in every Premier League game.”
For some time it felt a bit like that with Casemiro by myself. He had simply served a suspension for choosing up his 5th yellow card towards Crystal Palace, lacking United’s 3–2 defeat to Arsenal, when he met Palace once more and was once despatched off. A 3-match suspension intended he returned for the 7–0 loss to Liverpool and he was once despatched off once more 34 mins into the very subsequent tournament. There has been no ruin in coaching and European soccer has helped, dealing with Betis two times in March, however he has been to be had for 3 of United’s previous 11 league video games. He hasn’t performed for them since 16 March.
The expectation is that he is going directly again in. “He needs the rhythm from training and games and he misses that,” says Ten Hag. “But he also played for Brazil versus Morocco [on 25 March] and we’re lucky we played three games in six days, so he hasn’t missed that much.”
It has still been too much, bad enough the first time. “He gives us the feeling of security. We say he likes to give the ball away just so he can go and win it back again,” stated Luke Shaw ahead of taking part in Barcelona within the Europa League. “He’s extremely important and I’m happy to have him back because he has been a big miss.”
Three days later, Casemiro scored in the League Cup final, suspension seemingly behind him, but it didn’t take long before it happened again.
Ten Hag has talked about trying to find a new balance to midfield, inventing solutions that are “from time to time trial and blunder”. As Lisandro Martínez says of the absence of Casemiro and Christian Eriksen: “When you miss two quality players, it is clear. Games will be decided always in midfield. Casemiro’s absence has been bigger than might have been imagined. Too easily seen as serving Toni Kroos and Luka Modric at Madrid, not least because that was how he played it, at United there has been more to his game, qualities that were always there if only occasionally called upon, and a greater responsibility. Staff talk of his influence, a quiet leadership.
Casemiro decided his time at Madrid was up the day after winning his fifth Champions League, his cycle closing at 30. Carlo Ancelotti asked him to reconsider but he had made up his mind that England was his next destination.
He watched Manchester United lose 4–0 to Brentford in August, discussing options with his agent. United was a nice challenge, sure, but it was a risky one, he was warned. Casemiro, though, was convinced: “It’ll paintings,” he said. “Tell them I’ll repair this.”
And so he did. For a while, it went better than even the Brazilian could have imagined, enamored of Old Trafford, but for the past month he has missed it and they have had to fix the hole he left. Now at last he returns.
There is a lot to do, but at least there is time to do it, with United likely to be his last club. ,Cases has signed for four years plus one,” Ribot says.
“He’s come to win titles; This month has been onerous, however there may be not anything else on his thoughts.”