Welcome to Daily Merengue — A place where you can freely discuss all things football. Don’t be alarmed by apparent RMCF bias. It’s in the name!
Salute to the wonderful Mods, Valyrian Steel,Ezek XI,KungFuZizou,NeRObutBlanco,Felipejack, and Juninho.
In the words of MMers:
This person does not exist: You’re all talking about Juninho like he made a pact with heaven, like he’s some god. He’s just a man.
Los Vikings Church: Yes, he is just a person like you and me. despite this, The current MM DT only exists due to Juninho’s whim.
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Author’s words:
Sometimes I feel like Gojo…I feel like Toji most of the time. Traveling across heaven and earth, I am the only one who is insulted.
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Dear MM,
Style sparks fight. I’m not sure if this was mentioned in the last DT comments and I wasn’t too involved – I think a lot of you were trying to put Arbeloa vs. Habey into your “told you so” bag and then find yourself in a different position the next time we lose etc – but now that more time has passed I wanted to elaborate a bit I believe this is probably the only truth about this 25/26 Real Madrid team and season: style determines the fight.
Quick disclaimer: As I’ve said on countless occasions, and this is my opinion (as well as that of three-time Champions League winner Zidane…) winning La Liga is harder than winning the Champions League, and league performances tend to be more indicative of a team’s actual capabilities. The core reason for this belief is that La Liga demands relentless consistency over 38 games against opponents who know you and prepare you specifically for you, and our greatest rivals are equally consistent and rarely allow Real Madrid to have a bad month. This is unlike the Champions League, where a team may be mediocre in the previous group stage/league stage, but find form over the next 2-3 months as they only face teams in a knockout format, which may further highlight favorable refereeing decisions/mistakes etc. This disclaimer only appears so that you can continue reading and you can better understand my point of view. I’m not really arguing this – most Real Madrid fans prefer CL and think it’s harder due to Real Madrid’s history. I’m just telling you where I come from. I actually don’t care if you disagree haha
CL. Anyway, moving on… If we really, really want to get a deeper understanding of this Real Madrid team and the makeup of the players, I think the case can be made that this team is essentially a Champions League team. I mean, in the Champions League, Real Madrid will probably face teams with similar offensive capabilities as opposed to teams with a cohesive defense, and teams that play in a more open approach, and with our players who thrive in space, Real Madrid may have more success – especially on the counter-attack. In my opinion, this is actually one of the main reasons why I always felt we performed so well against Barcelona (once Kylian Mbappe learned what offside was) compared to Atletico Madrid. Our team thrives on space.
I’ll break it down a bit, although I don’t think this is really a groundbreaking revelation that I need to debate. Vinicius Junior, Kylian Mbappe and especially Fede Valverde all thrive in space. Some of their best abilities come in the form of passing the ball at lightning speed, which lends itself to a counter-attacking system compared to Getafe’s low blocking. I think we can even extend this argument to much of the midfield and some of our backline. Chuameni is not Rodri and he is not a deep-lying playmaker. His best attribute might actually be his athleticism, which is achieved by covering space, tackling, and occasionally quick passes to Trent/Arda/Kama – players who can initiate counter-attacks with stunning long balls or subtle progressive passes. I think Jude’s best attribute is also his athleticism. Sure, Jude can dribble, score on late runs, make the occasional stunning pass and make Khama-esque diving tackles in transition. But in my opinion this is a player built for the Premier League rather than any Spanish style of football. He’s better known for his tenacity than his mesmerizing passing. He is a player who deserves our praise everywhere. He was very much an athlete. As for our backline, Rudiger and Militão are more known for their chaotic defense on the occasional excellent long pass than for being in a possession scheme. Militao is actually an excellent long passer. However, you won’t find him dominating possession in the same way as the “confident” Dean Huijsen.
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For the record before this is selectively read, II don’t say this in a disparaging way. I think that may actually be a very welcome discussion as we move forward with this team and its composition. In 2026 you need athletic players and in my opinion pure tiki taka in football is dead and gone.
But that kind of athleticism may have its own drawbacks in La Liga.
La Liga. Especially against teams in the middle and lower ranks of La Liga, and Atletico Madrid, who are facing relegation every week, I believe this athleticism and pure counterattacking ability of our team will be a detriment. I probably don’t need to really elaborate on this either, as if I were Alex Roberts writing my life essay in a DT review (with nothing but love for Alex. Please take a week of DT time from me…I beg. Val let’s work overtime.) – But how many times have we seen this team completely lose to post players? Just this year against Getafe/Osasuna/Celta Vigo, these three teams were somewhat uninterested in actually attacking us with solid possession and our team looked lifeless. Vinnie has no room to dribble. Mbappe (not Falcao or Peter Crouch’s player) found himself trapped at the top of the box because God knows he wasn’t going to stay in the box waiting to head the ball (which frankly he shouldn’t have done). Chuameni found himself having to call the shots, and against a defensively cohesive team he couldn’t do it quickly enough. Feder trapped the ball at his feet in the middle of the park, something he’s not used to and I personally don’t think he’s good at. Wait wait wait wait
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These lower blocks then lead to the typical narrative we always discuss during recent transfer windows. We need a Joselu type ST (but GG——Live and die in a box that no one has ever worn, haha). We need a holding midfielder. We need a creative midfielder. We need an RW (it doesn’t matter if we can’t get the ball to the isolated winger fast enough).
Again, I said at the time that one of our best La Liga games was against Athletic Bilbao earlier in the season. In my opinion, this is no coincidence Bilbao has one of the highest defensive lines in La Liga (according to markstats). We were particularly successful in that game because Vinny and Mbappe had acres of space on the left. Trent releases their pass with ease and then good luck catching Vinny and/or Mbappe.
What does this ultimately mean? I have no idea. I don’t really have a conclusion on this yet. Maybe this means we still have a glimmer of hope in CL Because most teams we face tend to use a relatively high defensive line and pressing sequence. If the team can maintain defensive discipline (unlikely but possible) we might have a chance at the Etihad against Manchester City, Vincent Kompany’s Bayern, Liverpool or even Paris Saint-Germain. Maybe we were just unlucky last season against Arsenal aka Sporting London. But perhaps it’s also a more sinister end to our hopes for this team in La Liga in the current campaign. Since we rely on words like defensive discipline/intensity to describe players who frankly pride themselves on their offensive prowess rather than their defensive courage, we can expect home teams to be more inconsistent in the coming years and a little lost when faced with the new era of post defense and tactically nuanced defenses. Maybe this Real Madrid era is better suited to the glitz and glamor of the Premier League rather than the ruthlessness of Serie A in the 90s and early 2000s… idk. However, in my opinion, this may be an issue we should correct sooner rather than later.
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cheers,
J
Little Anecdote Pt. IV
The only thing better than MM now is living right, so I can’t leave any feelings behind. I have been speaking silently, but I have a strong aura, but I have never gotten through to you with my silent wisdom. There is a wealth of knowledge here, young man, that will not hold your hand and you will be penniless for playing the victim. The little ideas I told people went rogue until Coral gave me a big idea.
No reincarnation of love, wishing my Brazilian twins could stay, dance and be full of life. No more handshakes and hugs from me. MM energy only circulates within our body. Baldwin said everyone must be judged, but this time, it feels like God is looking out for us. 3-4 years, There is still that pen dedicated to writing the naked truth. Houli can speak with a vigilant tongue, this time the predicate is f-you. Now that the mood is getting heavier, I can also lift weights with the Olympians. I now carry various darts and plan to then ditch it like tiramisu.
So we can go body by body, I give you a body, I’m probably a better masseuse. I don’t really bother anyone, but when it’s time to clean my room, Val manages it for me. If I asked you to sit in front of Portrait of a Woman in the Louvre for a few hours, you would not see the picture. Huh – if I sat you down next to a Madrid fan at the Estadio da Luz, you wouldn’t have a clue. Someone like me, who started out with nothing but government cheese, can now capture the government too. Remember, Juni’s post was only cream and yellow, but now all my comments are blue. Remember when I said “I’m the greatest” when Ninja was arguing about number one and number two? This topic has always been hilarious to me, you brought them to me, my DT brought-
[crash]
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“I never got through the wisdom of silence”
