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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.
Writer’s Prelude. The Jose Juninho Era will continue.
Jose Juninho Edition
“If I’m hated at MM [Barcelona], it’s their problem but not mine. Fear is not a word in my DT [football dictionary.” — Jose Mourinho
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A Yesterday Recap. Alright…so things got a bit lost in the mix yesterday when discussing Vinicius & Mbappe so I’m just going to first bring some clarity to the chance creation and overall game of the two. First, as I’ve said Vinicius had a better game than Mbappe. They were both pretty terrible overall but Vini at least had 1-2 moments akin to his ability where Kylian was at best a bystander at worst a detriment. This imo is an absolute fact. In regards to the Kylian’s two big misses (that weren’t the penalty), Kylian absolutely needs to bury both chances. We would expect for him to bury those chances. My callout of Vini isn’t about blame it’s to exhibit a growing lack of confidence. The decision to pass is simply not one that a confident forward makes especially not one who is Balon D’Or caliber. Sure, we can disagree on whether that was a good footballing decision — personally I don’t think it was even though the result ended up being concrete. As I believe Turan said in yesterday’s thread, Vini should’ve buried the shot but after the pass Kylian should’ve buried the shot. I don’t think this sequence is the detriment of our season nor the game (there were other equally high xG opportunities like Kylian’s penalty miss and Vini’s miss at the 37 min) but it’s likely a theme we will have to course correct and fast.
Untouchables. Anyway and more importantly, this team isn’t going to win major trophies with this many “untouchables”. I just don’t see how we can for a multitude of reasons. One a list of nearly 1/3 of our XI as untouchable has to have real effects on our team ethos and chemistry where young budding forwards have a near-zero chance to continue their form or develop it. Second, and most importantly, the untouchable issue forces us to make quite frankly odd substitutions. This has actually been an issue since the Carlo era and at times curtails our ability to actually comeback when trailing. Yes, Arda was facing a potential sending off due to a second yellow but there’s an argument that his form in yesterday’s game necessitated that he remained on the field. If Jude instead was subbed for Diomande and Arda was moved to the 10, one could hypothetically still keep Arda’s creativity while mitigating the chances for him to receive a second yellow because at the 10 position his defensive duties would have likely been reduced. However, at Real Madrid — Jude Bellingham cannot be subbed. And I understand given Jude’s current form it’s a hard pill to swallow or take to make but when reviewing yesterday’s game and even Arda’s positioning throughout it. He was very much the impetus behind some of the best portions of our play.
We also run into a similar issue when subbing in Diomande / Espi. In many cases, one or both of these forwards come in for midfield solidity or creative impetuses. We expect these young players to produce in a system in not only a significantly short amount of time but also a system that quite frankly isn’t entirely set up for them to succeed. Yes, Espi was able to craft a brilliant disallowed goal from a great trivela assist from Vini. You know who would’ve been nice to have creating key chances for Espi…Arda Guler…Maybe with the added creativity coming from the right hand side or dare I say it from the 10 position, Espi would have been positioned to muster more than 1 shot…or maybe Espi would have been able to idk play more than 8 minutes when obviously Kylian / Vini were in a funk and Jude at times creative and at others a ghost. I won’t make the Diomande argument because there is also a certain level of timidness from Yan which I think hampers his ability to truly thrive but the one time I recall Diomande playing alongside Vini Kylian and Arda — Arda was integral in creating a chance where Kylian should have passed to Diomande on his left for a potential shot and goal during transition. It just didn’t occur because Kylian took a speculative shot. I’ll find the clip below.
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I feel like this ended up being a super pro-Arda take but I think he’s just the clearest example of a player who is hurt by the rigidity of the untouchables model. The other is likely Trent who is another creative player who likely has to sit on the bench because the only way that Arda at pseudo-RW works is if Dumfries is actually protecting that channel. We can only wonder what our team would look like if Jude played as a pivot, Trent was our RB, Arda our 10 and a player like Diomande (who has a great defensive workrate) covered our right flank. Who knows?
Note: I don’t fully endorse this tweet but I get the premise and understand it. It’s a good exa
Anyway, I actually think it’s less of a fact that Vini – Mbappe – Jude can’t play together. I kind of think they can. I just believe it’s unclear if a team can actually win when all three of those players are treated as untouchables. It’s unclear to me if any team in 2026 can truly survive when form doesn’t matter for their top players. Idk. I understand the argument that you keep a player of Vini / Kylian / Jude’s caliber on the field because you just never know when they’ll levitate + ascend and win you a massive game. However, at least for Real Madrid it’s unclear whether all three of these players are really doing that on a consistent basis. None of them are Cristiano or Messi so why do we afford them the same preferential treatment?
Idk, I’m genuinely just asking how many big game saving moments have we really mustered from these players in the final segments of a game that we’re chasing? Sure Jude had those moments 23/24, Vini had those moments before then. Mbappe is known to be Mbappe. But it’s 2026 and personally, I’m not a nostalgia chaser…I see players for what they are right now. But this is becoming far too long-winded so all I’ll say is the best team for the past two years has been PSG and Luis Enrique benched Dembele at HT 1-2 weeks ago. Shit, Enrique benched Dembele during the CL final. Mourinho will need to find a similar solution for this quickly or he’ll go the same way as his predecessors. Nadaplete.
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Cheers,
J
