The 28th minute of yet another game, a penetration from the left in front of Alberto Díaz’s chest, a knee that broke in the worst way, a fall, a scream and the rumor of Martín Carpena, with that whirr of tragedy left by the actions that everyone intuits serious at first. 13 and a half months have passed since that February 13 not to be forgotten and there is no trace of Carlos Alocén, a point guard in full swing then, a base to build an empire.
The worst omen, as the cliché says, was soon confirmed: a complete tear of the anterior cruciate ligament of the left knee. A few days later, on March 3, 2022, the hand, who was 21 years old at the time, underwent surgery at the Sanitas La Moraleja University Hospital. “He will begin his recovery period shortly,” reported Real Madrid about a countdown that, more than a year later, remains strangely and worryingly without an expiration date.
“The recovery process has gone well, just a little slower than normal,” they reveal from their environment, which highlights their good state of mind, the “desire to return”: “He is a tough guy.” That of the six months to return to action after a break in the crusader was buried in the past, from so many relapses. In the NBA, for example, by protocol a player cannot return to the courts for this type of injury until a year has passed. In the case of Alocén, who played 86 games in a season and a half for white, everything has been “slow”, as the club also confirms. «A year ago I played my last game. A year of many ups and downs and difficult moments along the way, but a year of continuous learning. The road is being long, perhaps a little more than he expected, “confessed the player himself on his social networks.
Because Carlos, who arrived at Real Madrid in the summer of 2020 from Zaragoza as a great national promise – he had paid his clause a year earlier, but kept it on loan at his home club – has not even started training with the group yet. He maintains his individual training, apart from his teammates, without contact, a lot of physiotherapy work, strengthening and tuning. The evident delay has to do with physical discomfort that had nothing to do with the operated ligament. But also with how difficult it is for him to get on a train that is running in the middle of the season, as is the current Real Madrid. And that, in recent weeks, Chus Mateo, with Sergio Llull and Nigel Williams-Goss injured, has only been able to count on a pure director, Sergio Rodríguez. “Carlos is ready to play now,” they say, however.
But the outlook for Alocén is not easy. If in a few weeks he was able to enter into the dynamics of Mateo’s collective training sessions, the season would be in the middle of the final battle, with the Endesa League playoffs -starting on May 25- and those of a Euroleague -April 19- at the around the corner. In the domestic competition he has not been registered, but he was registered a few days ago in the continental competition, just before the end of the term. Also Anthony Randolph, a similar case, although the American center has already been, for a few days, training with the rest of his teammates. In fact, just yesterday, Chus Mateo announced that he could return this weekend in the league game against Granada, even though his cruciate ligament tear, also in his left knee, was during the finals against Barça, on the 13th of June, long after that of Alocén.
What would not be strange is that the international point guard did not play a single minute this season. Even if those 5:25 in Malaga were his last game with Real Madrid. Because, although in no case is he going to leave on loan at this point, the contract ends on June 30 and it is Real Madrid itself that has the option of extending that relationship for another season.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
