Madrid, May 9 (IANS) Real Madrid coach Alvaro Arbeloa denied there were tensions in the club’s dressing room when he spoke to the press ahead of Sunday’s visit to play FC Barcelona in the El Clasico.

The game, in which Barcelona can seal this season’s La Liga title with a draw, comes just three days after a well-publicized dressing room fight between Aurelien Tchouameni and Fede Valverde ended with Valverde needing stitches and diagnosed with cranioencephalic trauma, which means he is likely to miss the next two weeks, and both players were handed fines of 500,000 euros.

The fight between Tchouameni and Valverde came just days after defender Alvaro Carreras admitted to another incident with Antonio Rudiger, while Kylian Mbappe has been criticized for traveling to Italy last weekend while recovering from a hamstring injury, reported Xinhua.

“It’s a healthy dressing room,” insisted Arbeloa in his press conference, saying it was “not easy to accept two seasons without a trophy, and to be a Real Madrid player you have to have a lot of ambition.”

“Of course, we have to do things better; change, reflect… but I see a healthy dressing room,” he insisted.

The coach denied responsibility for allowing the tension between Valverde and Tchouameni to boil over.

“I don’t have my office inside the Real Madrid dressing room. I wish I could be responsible for everything that happens and control everything,” he said.

“This should serve as an example for everyone. We need to turn the page, learn from it, and not forget that tomorrow there’s a Barcelona-Real Madrid match,” continued Arbeloa.

Arbeloa insisted the club had handled the incident well, saying he was “very proud of the club’s decisiveness, speed, and transparency” and happy that “the players have acknowledged their mistake, expressed their regret, and apologized.”

“I’m not going to publicly crucify them because they don’t deserve it. They’ve shown me what it means to be a Real Madrid player.”

“Valverde and Tchouameni deserve for us to move on, to give them a chance to keep fighting for this club. I’m very proud of them. I won’t allow this to be used to question their professionalism,” he commented, before insisting that Tchouameni would be in the squad for Sunday’s game.

–IANS

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