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.Here is a new thing I’m committing to this season: Five semi-informal bullet points after each game.
Also, check out the post-game podcast where Matt and I break down the win (and more) for 50 minutes:
- Yan Diomande has completely upgraded the left flank while bringing equilibrium to the team.
Here are just some of the dominoes that have fallen since Diomande has taken over the left wing as a starter:
- The left wing has improved defensively which also means:
- Marc Cucurella no longer has to “do all the dirty work Vinicius doesn’t want to do” (Cucurella’s words, not mine).
- Kylian Mbappe has a partner he has much better chemistry with.
- Everyone has better chemistry in attack, and the quartet of Diomande, Mbappe, Jude Bellingham, and Arda Güler have been terrific at suffocating opponents and understanding each other’s runs. There is real chemistry that hasn’t existed in a long time.
Part of this is that Diomande has a more simplified football brain than Vinicius Jr — and that’s meant in an entirely complimentary way. Diomande doesn’t complicate anything. One touch is all he needs to play the right vertical pass to Mbappe in the left half space; but if he needs to take multiple touches to escape a tight space, he’ll do that too. Diomande hunts, tracks, and dusts defenders effortlessly.
He does also score some of the tastiest bangers you can lay your eyes on.
- The ‘Once de Gala’
This is the first time in a long time where not only: A) Real Madrid’s coach knows what his best starting XI is; but also: B) The fans are also (mostly) in complete agreement with it.
Ergo, Real Madrid finally have a starting XI that makes sense on paper.
Jose Mourinho has figured out a balance in the double pivot. It’s not both of Arda Güler and Bernardo Silva, and it’s not both of Aurelien Tchouameni and Eduardo Camavinga — it’s one from each set to balance the profiles of ball progression and ground coverage without falling into extremes.
One of the positive dominoes from Diomande starting on the left wing, which I intentionally left out above because I wanted to address here, is that it has made room for all of Real Madrid’s best players to play together in a way that that the puzzle pieces make sense without overlapping into tactical redundancy. Mourinho’s new scheme enables all of the aforementioned front four, as well as Fede Valverde and Bernardo Silva, to all be on the field. It’s looked great.
- The second half ‘struggles’ shouldn’t be overblown.
Real Madrid killed this game in the first half. The second half was all about game-management. Racing Santander are a team that is capable of pressing, and they’re actually not a bad team overall. They got completely massacred in the first half, and then finally decided to press aggressively to start the second half because they had no choice.
It took about 10 minutes to tame it. 10 minutes. That’s all it was — not an entire half. They had one big chance in those 45 minutes and still had a lower second half xG.
- The second goal: Perfection.
The second goal was gorgeous. Racing press, Dean Huijsen doesn’t have any immediate outlets so he creates space, and plays a left-footed long range pass to Mbappe. Mbappe, in turn, holds it up expertly.
Watch Bellingham, immediately upon seeing Mbappe receive the ball, recognize he has to sprint and make that third-man run. While this is all happenning, Güler already sees where the play is going — he’s made that one-touch pass before even receiving the ball from Mbappe:
There were several great sequences of play like this throughout the game.
- Cucurella + Huijsen = great.
These two have been great together and it’s not talked about enough. They have great chemistry escaping pressure, cover for each other defensively, and are forming a great partnership and friendship. It’s really fun to see Huijsen grow so much this season, and I think Cucurella has been a big compliment to his game.
I’m very excited to see this partnership continually develop.
