These observations — where I look at Real Madrid’s history, its players on loan, Castilla, tactical tidbits, and other relevant thoughts — are now a regular thing. All previous editions can be found
here.I don’t normally like international breaks, but when the club you support is playing poorly — and has been doing so for over two years — and you get a chance to decompress for three weeks while watching your team’s superstars dominate with their national teams, it’s, uh, not that terrible.
Jude Bellingham
and Arda Güler have been lights out all international break. It’s nice to see Carlos Espi beat up poor San Marino with five goals. There are other things, some good, some bad: Brahim Diaz continues to produce for Morocco, Yan Diomande looks good, Denzel Dumfries under Xavi so far has looked solid; and, Vinicius has been replaced by an alien (this is a half joke).
The headlines, though, are definitely that Bellingham and Güler are both incredible and it would be a shame we didn’t capitalize with the right players and scheme around them:
I saved one of the best for last: Zinedine Zidane is back, and France are fun again, and football is better with Zidane around.
I had three takeaways watching the France vs Belgium game today:
- It wasn’t the same without Zidane these past few years. Remember when Michael Jordan played basketball and he was the coolest human alive? Then he retired and basketball wasn’t the same. And then he came back to play with the Washington Wizards and he was the coolest man alive again? And then he left, and basketball isn’t the same without him. And whenver he makes a cameo somewhere once every 10 years, you just wish he was always around, because he’s that cool.
Zidane is the football version of that. He has aura (as the kids say) and his presence is magnetic. He is instantly the coolest person in any room he walks in. - Evidently the Real Madrid player who needed this international break the most was Eduardo Camavinga. He looks like he’s benefitted greatly from have Zidane whispering confidence in his ear while sprinkling gold dust in his boots. Camavinga looked really good tonight as France’s anchor.
- Camavinga is among the list of Real Madrid midfielders that don’t look good in a double pivot — so why does Jose Mourinho insist on it?
The third point has been on my mind this entire international break. Neither of these three players work in a double pivot together in any combination against elite teams: Eduardo Camavinga, Aurelien Tchouameni, Fede Valverde. If you plug in Toni Kroos with one of them, fine. But we all know Kroos is gone, and that drum has been beaten to death. It might work if you stick Güler or Bellingham deeper as an 8, but Mourinho has shown us zero inclination that that’s a possibility. The only other potential piece that could make it tick is Bernardo Silva, who hasn’t featured much, yet.
There is another solution, and I’m not sure how likely it is: Mourinho can change his scheme and try an entirely different formation.
There is something inherently frustrating for Madridistas to see so many of their players look good with their national teams, and yet, when they all return to Real Madrid, the puzzle pieces just don’t fit properly.
This is where Mourinho needs to be less rigid with how he deploys the team and needs to start getting creative with his solution after the international break ends.
There is a caveat in Camavinga’s performance against Belgium tonight in that the Belgians sat deep for the majority of this game, which gave Camavinga a ton of room to operate. The way to make Camavinga uncomfortable is to put pressure on him and test his mental resilience in deep positions. I state this as a word of caution in case Madridistas get carried away with what they saw tonight.
Having said that, Camavinga put in a very solid cameo. His distribution — short and long — was on point, he took up really good positions in between the lines, and had a nasty signature Cobra Slide Tackle just before half-time on Morreira in a dangerous position. He read passing lanes well, and racked up the most interceptions (four) of anyone on the field.
Zidane-ball can be extremely fun, as everyone on this website already knows. Zidane likes to pump the ball out to line-breaking wingers as quickly as possible, and if the pass is not on, then — and only then — does the ball go central until they can swing it around to the other side and try again. It’s a lot of positive chaos, and France were so relentless, it was only a matter of time the dam broke. As soon as Rayan Cherki and Michael Olise came on, they turned this game on its head and overwhelmed Belgium.
Whether or not Camavinga will return to Madrid at his best, only time will tell. But having him work under Zidane doesn’t seem to be doing him any harm, that much is certain.
