5 Real Madrid youth players who should play for the first team

#1 Martin Odegaard

Odegaard has struggled to break into the first team despite his talent

It hasn’t happened for Martin Odegaard at Real Madrid so far. The Norwegian was touted as the game’s greatest young talent when he moved to the Bernabeu in 2015 but as of right now, his future is very much uncertain.

It was never going to be easy coming to Madrid at just 16 and Odegaard did not get the best of welcomes at Castilla and found it difficult to fit into the team. The Norwegian had to feature for Castilla on the weekends and train with the first team squad at the same time so that did not make things any easier for him.

However, he has been at the club for almost two years and would probably have expected to be a first-team regular by now. That second year would have been the moment when the Norwegian midfielder would have been looking towards winning a first-team place and then making it his own.

However, the attacking midfielder – who turned 18 in December – has left Real on loan to join Heerenveen in the Netherlands which will last one and a half seasons, with his pathway to the first team blocked in Madrid.

This makes things harder for Odegaard, who finds himself too good to play for Madrid’s B team but at the same time not good enough to take the place of players like James Rodriguez, Luka Modric and even Isco in Los Blancos’s first team.