Zidane revealed Bale trained on Friday but not as the same intensity as his team-mates , and he will likely miss Saturday s game along with Eden Hazard and Marcelo, who have respective ankle and calf problems.
Media reports suggested Hazard is set to miss El Clasico against Barcelona on December 18 due to the injury, with Zidane confirming the problem was worse than first feared.
It s always bad news when a player gets injured, Zidane said.
Of course he s upset that he s unavailable. It might be a bit more concerning, the injury, than we first thought.
We will have to see, but he will be back with the rest of the players soon.
Hazard made a slow start to life at Madrid and has still scored just once in LaLiga, but Zidane feels he was rediscovering the type of form he showed at Chelsea prior to picking up the injury against Paris Saint-Germain last week.
It s a very bad piece of news that we ve lost Eden Hazard to injury as we have some very big games coming up, Zidane added.
He had been playing very well and I m sure he will again in the future. It s not good when you have players out injured, especially a player like Eden Hazard.
He was in great form. We ve seen him play very well, he had reproduced that form that we had seen before in England. It s a setback and hopefully he won t be out for long.
