Eder Militao should not start Real Madrid's match vs Racing Santander

Real Madrid defender Eder Militao has yet to start a single game for the club since getting injured in May of this year. He has had a very bad time with injuries in his Real Madrid career. Despite coming back from two ACL injuries, he was forced to miss another few months of action due to a hamstring issue late last season. He has now made a full recovery and has even featured as a substitute in one match for the club, which was a 4-1 win over Sevilla at the Bernabéu about a couple of weeks ago.

Jose Mourinho has talked about him at length whenever asked about the progress in his recovery. He always says that Militao is a much better football player than he thought, and he already had good opinions on him from before he came back to the club. He's always mesmerised by him and is eager to start playing him at some point, but that probably would not happen against Racing Club on Sunday, and the reason makes complete sense.

Eder Militao must be eased into the Real Madrid starting XI

This has not been reported by anyone, and it also hasn't been talked about by Mourinho in his press conference earlier on Saturday, but Militao is in a very delicate position at the moment. He has only just come back from injury, and it is not easy for a player who has had such bad luck with injuries in these last few years to automatically come back into the lineup without being eased in.

If Mourinho puts him in the lineup against Racing Club, that would mean Militao, in just his second appearance for the club this season, has already gotten a start. It is not unprecedented, but it certainly does not happen with injury-prone players like Militao. They're usually eased in. They have a few substitute appearances here and there, and then they get their first start in a relatively smaller game.

This could be classified as a relatively smaller game, but it isn't. Even if it was, Real Madrid must treat Militao with absolute caution to be able to preserve him and get the best out of him in these future days and weeks. Hopefully, Militao comes off the bench and plays a few minutes in the second half, but as it stands, it looks like another matchday on the bench for the Brazilian centre-back.

As eager as he would be to play, he probably knows that it is very important to be eased in rather than forced in, and that is exactly what Mourinho is doing. At least, I hope it is.