Real Madrid's Squad to face Schalke 04 to Finish Pre-Season

Tomorrow afternoon, at 17:00 CET, Real Madrid will play in their final pre-season friendly, as they take on newly promoted Bundesliga side, Schalke 04. There could still be something behind closed doors and/or internal arranged, but this is the final official friendly before the season starts against RCD Espanyol next weekend.

With that in mind, the club have officially announced the squad that will travel to Gelsenkirchen, West Germany for the game, and is as follows;

Thibaut Courtois, Andriy Lunin, Ilya Voloshyn; Trent Alexander-Arnold, Denzel Dumfries, Dean Huijsen, Ibrahima Konate, Antonio Rudiger, Mario Rivas, Alvaro Carreras, Marc Cucurella; Jorge Cestero, Eduardo Camavinga, Federico Valverde, Bernardo Silva, Arda Guler, Jude Bellingham; Vinicius Jr, Kylian Mbappe, Carlos Espi, Brahim Diaz and Yan Diomande. 

Having previously not taken any risks with Courtois after his minor injury sustained at the FIFA World Cup with Belgium, he has been called up for this one, finally reuniting with Jose Mourinho, more than 10 years after they last worked together at Chelsea in the Premier League.

The majority of the players who returned from the World Cup this week are in a pre-season squad for the first time, in Cucurella, Konate, Bellingham and Mbappe. However, Tchouameni is not in the squad

The notable absences are the 26-year old as well as forward Endrick, you can make of their exclusions what you will, though it does look like both players will be part of the squad for this upcoming season.

Considering this is the final friendly before the season, you would imagine that there will be a little less experimenting in the starting XI from Mourinho, and that the side will look at least very close to the one that starts against Espanyol. 

So, it will be very interesting to see who he goes with. Will he choose Alexander-Arnold or Dumfries at right-back? Which central defensive partnership will he go with? And so on and so forth. 

That being said, it had been suggested that Mbappe "will play some minutes", perhaps suggesting that he will be eased in with a cameo in the second half. This could in turn give Espi a chance to show what he can do from the start, particularly with Endrick not involved. 

Ah well, let's wait and see what happens. A reminder that the game will kick off at 17:00 on Sunday, over in Gelsenkirchen. Let's just hope for a good game and most importantly, no injuries.