Welcome to The Daily Merengue — a place where you can feel free to discuss all things football. Do not be alarmed by the overt RMCF bias. It’s in the name!
Shoutout to the Mods who do a fantastic job, Valyrian Steel, Ezek XI, KungFuZizou, NeRObutBlanco, Felipejack, and Juninho.
Word From Author:
“Another no backspace edition of the Daily Merengue. Also for felipe:”
Disclaimer: Xabi
Xabi Alonso Olano.
Before we dive into this, I think it’s important to note who our manager is and how he is making decisions. We’ll just quickly address this as I’m tired of revisiting the past. Last year, during our calamitous season, Real Madrid fans consistently complained about our manager’s lack of Plan B, lack of tactical flexibility, and his inability to often make difficult decisions (e.g., benching star players with poor form, trusting Los Cataneros, Lucas Vazquez, etc.). Many then welcomed Xabi Alonso as someone who could be different. He was exclaimed as a no nonsense manager who would make tough decisions based off merit, trust youthful players, and not be bullied by the board OR the star-studded squad.
We Got What We Asked For. This is less directed towards MM as much as it’s directed towards RM Twitter and fans everywhere: Relax — you got what you asked for. We now have a manager who IS willing to bench Vini / Rodrygo when they’re in poor form. We now have a manager who IS willing to bide by Franco / Arda mistakes as he trusts the youth to develop into class players. We now have a manger who does enjoy tactical flexibility and employs in-game changes. We now have a manager who actually makes subs lol. We have yet to lose this season so we may need to grant him a bit more grace as he continues to shape this team.
Difficult Decisions
No Backspaces: LET’S GO!
Decision #1 — Midfield Trio. This is somewhat a continuation of yesterday’s topic about Arda Guler but Xabi needs to come to the realization // make a big decision regarding our midfield trio. With the return of Jude & Camavinga, we will officially have 6 available midfielders (Jude, Arda, Cama, Tchou, Fede, Ceballos) and maybe 8 if you consider the potential for Brahim / Mats to play as 10s. Now that we have this depth, it may be time for Xabi to make two crucial decisions — 1) should we still play with a midfield trio and 2) if so who should that be?
Jose Juninho Opinion. I believe its time to redefine this team with a 4-person midfield of Jude, Cama / Arda, Fede, and Tchouameni. My primary issue with our midfield trio is the conflicting / repetitive profiles of our midfielders. If we field a trio of the simply most renown midfielders — Jude, Tchou, Fede, our midfield will be incredibly placed for pressing, general athleticism, and defending in transition. However, it will likely lack the ability to breakdown low blocks. This midfield lacks creativity. It lacks truly press resistant players in terms of passing ability. And it lacks someone to truly takeover the midfield and dictate our build-up pace. If we play a trio involving Arda, we’ll likely find ourselves in similar situations to yesterday where if Arda plays in the trio, we will likely have Tchou + Fede / Jude running like headless chickens to cover gaps of space. Arda is getting better as a CM and I’m ok with some of the growing pains but there is a natural issue with his lack of physique and defensive awareness. He isn’t Toni Kroos who despite being slow was intentional in his defensive positioning. Arda isn’t there yet and I’m not sure if he will be THIS year. Now could we throw Camavinga into this mix and make a midfield trio work…maybe? IMO Jude / Tchou / Camavinga could actually thrive to some extent but we again would lose Arda’s true creativity with Mbappe as well as stunt our set pieces. I could break this down more but I think we all get the picture.
My hottest take is our best midfield trio would actually feature Dani Ceballos but I don’t have the time to argue with all of you Ceballos haters on how he’s actually our best player in dictating build-play while providing defensive coverage. Ceballos, Jude, Tchouameni would actually be pretty formidable but we can just move on from that.
Conclusion. Xabi give the people a 4-man midfield. This formation would be sturdier without sacrificing our creativity and likely more press resistant without sacrificing our balance. I’ll be honest Xabi, I’m not sure if I even care which 4 you pick. They all pretty much fit seamlessly. Now, this would be absolutely damaging to maintaining our forward’s spirits (poor GG + Endrick) but it may be a risk that we need to take and it’s not like we’re getting scintillating performances from anyone not named Mbappe. We will face more clinical teams than Marseille sooner rather than later.
Decision #2 — The Battle of the LW. Xabi Alonso and the football gods have graced this new era of MM with a new interface and a new James v. Isco war for the masses!!!! And this time it’s the fight for one spot by compatriots, former friends, former CL winners together, the Brazilian Duo, the future of Brazil, the heirs to Neymar (well technically that’s Rodrygo as told by Neymar himself)! Sooo let’s dive into this mess.
Are We Losing Vini? Whether you’re Vini’s biggest fan or his greatest hater, I think we can all agree that Vini hasn’t looked like “Vini” in almost a year. Most state that his performances have gone down since the Rodri Balon D’Or robbery which occurred on October 28, 2024 or 324 days ago. Vini just hasn’t risen back to his 23/24 late season heights. He’s still finding goals / assists but the process to get there just seems muddy. His touches don’t seem the same. He seems slower (ex: breakaway from Ceballos pass against Real Sociedad). His decision making feels at times sporadic. He’s being praised for his defensive work more than anything he does going forward. This isn’t the Vini we fell in love with.
Now why is this? I’m not sure. It could be a hierarchy issue with Mbappe. It could just be manufactured from his contract situation with Real, where both parties seem to still be at an impasse. He could now have an unsettling relationship with Xabi (Gustavo Ramirez of ESPN, who is generally good for Brazilian news, states his relationship with Xabi isn’t ideal but it doesn’t seem to be bad. It just isn’t Carlo). He could just be taking time to adjust to these new tactics and teammates. Hell, it could be something personal at home that none of us even know. All we can say is he doesn’t seem like Vini.
And I posed this question a bit in yesterday’s comments, but are we losing Vini? Is Xabi mentally losing Vini with this LW competition? A competition that he hasn’t faced in what….4 years? I’m not in the business of bashing player’s attitudes or even really discussing them (as tbh you lot often discuss the attitudes of players who look a certain way a lot different than you do when discussing those passionate Gavis / Sergio Ramos’ / Carvajals *wink *wink*). I actually like Vini’s fiery nature and love his passion for the game. But I’ll admit, the video of him walking off the field as the first player after the win, just felt unsettling. Not in the way like “oh he’s unprofessional — we should be mad!”. No instead it just felt like, “hmm I’m not sure he’s taking this well.” It was more of a concern of his mental than anything. A concern of whether this competition will spur him to actually return into better form or just lead to sometimes the negatives of passion — where you spiral or lash out. His IG story post yesterday also brought speculation of his unhappiness and is quickly juxtaposed by Rodrygo’s post which seemed to just simply celebrate a win. Idk it just felt weird.
Now, I don’t think Vini is a victim of Xabi’s treatment. I mean let’s be serious, he hasn’t performed to the undisputed starter required level in a while and he still has played more than his positional rival — Rodrygo. He’s just in a funk and idk maybe it’s unfair to call it a year-long funk. Maybe one way or another we already lost him. But who know’s Vini could just as easily be back in week. I just don’t know.
Will We Ever Have Rodrygo? I’ve debated for a while that imo the team collectively functions better with Rodrygo on the pitch. Particularly last year, I stated that Rodrygo may not be better than Vini but the team collectively plays better with Rodrygo’s more cohesive style of play. And yesterday, I don’t think it’s a huge coincidence that as Kiyan said “the first half included the best pressing I’ve ever seen from this team.” But as the issue with Rodrygo’s cohesive nature — we still weren’t decisive. Rodrygo still wasn’t fully decisive. Rodrygo needed to do 10x better on his shot which ended up being a pass to Rulli. He also needed to retain possession better in a few early instances. IMO he needs to drift a bit more from the wing and not rely as much on individual skill (something we rarely used to say about Rodrygo). He needs to play with more freedom rather than a desperation to prove himself. Quite frankly, Rodrygo hasn’t solidified his position in any way for me to say “He absolutely deserves to start over Vini against Espanyol.” And on this note…will he? If Vini continues to play more it means that Vini is winning the battle in training, and if Vini’s winning in training, he’s going to win with attempts to prove himself on the pitch. LW Rodrygo looked brilliant in December / January of last year but is that simply a KFZ purple patch? Is he actually a player who can maintain his talent ceiling consistently? Can Xabi count on him? I don’t know.
Conclusion: Xabi will have to eventually decide how long to maintain this competition without giving one of the players a longer leash to make mistakes and play into form. IMO Xabi likely has another month or maybe two to experiment before this frequent level of competition actually becomes a central issue for this team. As reports slowly roll in, I’m not entirely sure either of them is taking this well. Rodrygo seemed to be upset on the bench after Oviedo and predictably was caught looking saddened against I believe Mallorca. Vini also seems a bit unsettled at the moment through his recent actions. Nevertheless, at least based off the current minutes — it’s Vini’s job to lose.
..We’ll Be Back
“I was star-gazing.”
– Rodrygo Goes #11
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“the revolution will be televised.“
