Transfer Rumours | Tactics | Who to buy/sell etc

Look.  If you have very talented kids like Mbappe, Varane, Xavi, Iniesta, Jese (pre-injury), etc... of course you give them a chance.  Barca was lucky enough that they had an extremely talented group come up together.  But even then, Pique was sent out to EPL to develop.

The kids we have aren't talents like that at all...  Asensio is the most talented and he's not in that category.  It's stupid imo to bet on kids who need to exceed expectations to be worthy of the shirt.  Those other guys mentioned above just needed to meet expectations, nothing more.

Finally, football has changed.  There are too many teams with massive spending power that can build great teams.  So you will get killed using the youth policy.  Barca realized this and they've gone away from their roots to stay ahead of the curve.

I'm hoping this is just a one season fad for Real Madrid and we spend big next summer.  I've mostly written this season off not because we aren't talented enough given the core regulars...  but because they're older and the backups are kids.  We also lost our biggest match winner and replaced him with Mariano.  Our most talented kid CM was Kova and we sent him out without replacement.  We were thing at CB last season and we didn't address the problem.  Etc.

Hope I'm wrong... but this looks like a throw away season to me in terms of trophies. Not that it won't be entertaining. But i'd consider it a pleasant surprise if we win anything.

Sports, you don’t have to be so negative. I’ve said all along that this year will be transitional.

Perez has a philosophy that he is following and you obviously disagree. That’s your opinion, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you are right.

You clearly have written off Ceballos, but again that is your opinion. And speaking about next youth phenom, whose to say Vinicius or Rodrygo won’t reach that level!

As I said earlier there are many risks with this philosophy, but only time will tell whether it works or not.

Back to topic, the problems IMO with this market activity or more precisely inactivity, is the over reliance on two forwards with injury and poor performance history.

Ceballos, Asensio and Rodrygo are all incredible talents. Only fault they have is that they're not French.

sportsczy is very correct here imo.

guest7 wrote:sportsczy is very correct here imo.

Yeah and if those kids were named Varane, Mbappe and Pogba, you think he wouldn’t have a different opinion!

Look he is entitled to his opinion, but at end of day, it is only an opinion!

futbol_bill wrote:

guest7 wrote:sportsczy is very correct here imo.

Yeah and if those kids were named Varane, Mbappe and Pogba, you think he wouldn’t have a different opinion!

Look he is entitled to his opinion, but at end of day, it is only an opinion!

futboll_bill is semi correct here too.

You are comparing Ceballos, Asensio and Rodrygo to Mbappe, Varane and Pogba? French players are the best in the world right now, it's not even debatable.

I was taking about french names!

A few years ago Spain was world champs, but that didn’t mean any Spanish player was the best. That literally is what Sports is now saying!

Let’s get back on topic, to Tito’s question. We’ve heard Sports opinion. What are others?

I mentioned Jese too...  who i felt was extremely talented before injury.

Let's use other examples.  Verratti would be another one that deserved it when he came from Pescara to PSG.  There's an Italian kid called Pietro Pellegri that Monaco bought from Genoa who seems to have that elite talent in him as well.  Asensio is very talented but lacks the killer instinct imo.  But he deserves a chance too.  Thilo Kehrer is apparently destroying people in training thus forcing Tuchel to consider moving Marquinhos to DM.

Look, we're not Monaco.  My point is that unless the kid in question has elite potential and is showing enough poise to handle the pressure, Madrid is not the place for him.  Out of all our kids, only Asensio has that.

I think Rodrygo looks like he has it. That kid is incredible.

I'm not sure about Vinicius at all. Looks talented but really clumsy.

I think it would be a tragedy to bring kids to Madrid who aren't ready and either destroy them by putting them on the senior team or sending them to Castilla where the level of competition is beyond shit.

Not saying we shouldn't buy kids...  but we should systematically send them on loan or sell them with options to buy.  Real Madrid is not and should never be a developmental club.

@freeza. Rodrygo looks fantastic. I'd love to buy him and bring him to try over preseason. But if he doesn't hack it YET, don't send him to Castilla like Vinicius. What the heck is Vinicius going to learn at Castilla?

sportsczy wrote:I think it would be a tragedy to bring kids to Madrid who aren't ready and either destroy them by putting them on the senior team or sending them to Castilla where the level of competition is beyond shit.

Not saying we shouldn't buy kids...  but we should systematically send them on loan or sell them with options to buy.  Real Madrid is not and should never be a developmental club.

@freeza. Rodrygo looks fantastic. I'd love to buy him and bring him to try over preseason. But if he doesn't hack it YET, don't send him to Castilla like Vinicius. What the heck is Vinicius going to learn at Castilla?

What do you mean buy Rodrygo? We already got him. I think he's the one who'd be able to break through right away. And he fills a need we have right now. So unless we fix it next summer, I can see him starting. Maybe he'll come this winter if we need the depth, as he turns 18 in January.

Yeah I agree with Vinicius. He shouldn't be playing on Castilla at all. Don't think he's much worse than Vazquez already, which shows what I think of Vazquez. Valladolid seemed like an option given the Ronaldo news/rumours.

we got him? lol. Shows how much attention i paid this summer given the WC. Well that one was a great buy. I just hope we handle him properly.

If you're going to give a kid a chance... then you go with it regardless of inconsistencies for a year unless he really flops. That's how you do it. I'm not sure we have that kind of patience as a club.

Just a side note, Pique wasn't sent to EPL for development, the man left Barcelona.

I also see a lot of hindsight being used here. When Iniesta and Xavi were younger, no one predicted them becoming so good in their prime. It's ridiculous to now look back and say, oh we dont have talents like Iniesta or Xavi lol, we were not collectively calling them future goats when they were younger.

The case for Mbappe is very very unique, and there is no point talking about him because what he is doing at his age has only been seen a few times in history.

Now we see Madrid going the direction of saying that they want to give kids a chance to grow in Madrid, and it's something i appreciate. It has to be balanced with world class players of course but we can't sustain having to pay huge sums everytime we want to sign a good player. More and more teams in Spain are already increasing the release clauses of their players and make it prohibitive to even look at some kids.

I believe that Ceballos, Odriozola, Asensio, Valverde and even Vallejo are excellent talents. You can pick and choose other players that better fit your personal taste in that age range but they are in the very top and should not be discounted. Let's see how they come along, and even if i dont necessarily think we are best set up for all to bloom in this Madrid, the logic the club is working with is not a bad one.

Also, if we did not have bias, we would respect Mariano a lot more because he basically left castilla to go score 20 goals in ligue 1 and came back.

The kid has more confidence in his sweat than most players in madrid. I dont know if he feeds on the same stuff as Keylor but we should respect more what he did because oh by the way he scored more goals than merman and mbappe in ligue 1 last year trollololololol

I'd rate the summer window a 'C' on the scale provided. Could have done a lot better, but given the circumstances I'd give it a pass.

Positives (from biggest positive to smallest positive): Hired a coach who is proactive, relies on the collective more so than individual talents (which is good because we just lost a huge individual talent in R7). Mariano over Mayoral is a HUGE improvement- again could have done even better but Mayoral on the bench hurt us last season. Courtois was cheap, and he is younger and imo an upgrade on Navas. Odri- much needed competition for Carva. Vinicius- very impressed with him so far, hopefully will get playing time soon.

Negatives (from biggest negative to smallest negative): Lost about 40 goals per season in Ronaldo. CB was not reinforced when we have often injured Varane and Vallejo, and often suspended Ramos. If Lope doesn't trust Llorente, or learn to trust him we are light on defensive CM's. Side note- I just want to repeat, Kova - as much as I rate him (I rate him very highly btw), is not really a DCM, and he wasn't like for like with Casemiro. If we actually play Ceballos this season (who is much more similar to Kova than Case) we will not feel the loss of Kova as much as people suspect.

So there you go. For me, it was an 'average' window, not great not terrible.

Interesting side story that relates- I just watched the movie Moneyball (highly recommend). Even though I know nothing about baseball I'll try to explain it. The gist is- The Oakland A's lost their best player in Damon to the Red Socks. All of their scouts were trying to sign someone to replace Damon, but Billie Beane (the GM and main character in the movie) had to take a different approach. To replace 1 player with massive output, you don't sign 1 worse version of the player you lost, you sign 3 players who can make up the difference.

Replacing Ronaldo like for like was always an impossible task. Taking a different approach, creating a system that relies less on individual talents while having faith the the players we have (Benz, Bale, Asensio, Isco, Mariano off the bench, and midfield) to make up the difference is a completely viable option. Losing goals is obviously a problem, but at the end of the day you only need 1 goal to win a game, and turning some of those regretful losses from last season into wins or draws could get us more points than we had last season. I think it is going to take time to get used to the new system, but in the long run it can be more sustainable.

Realistically, of the players available, the only one who could have improved us was Martial and RM showed no interest.

Even when they were young, Iniesta was supremely talented, Messi was Messi and Xavi was very solid. Those were very easy decisions.

None of our kids look remotely like those 3 obviously even as youth players.

removed

extremely harsh comments from sportczy, dare i say downright brutal. i was going to ask how he rates our summer window, but i think what's understood doesn't need to be explained ....for the record, i agree with the bulk of his comments. except for one part; these kids can be moulded if we are set on going this path, and it will be an extremely tough path to follow considering who we are up against. but if things get too tough for flo and for fans then the whole youth experiment thing will be altered. i do not see this as a long term policy, but one of convenience

imo our policy that has yielded some results has been to have other mid to top level european clubs develop our talents for us and bring them back. we don't have a good track record nor the patience for talent development

@vandeez, nice point, i've said we would have to become more defensive and keep more clean sheets, we can't get too adventurous as we may not have the influx of goals like we once did. but keeping clean sheets did not have to mean having this many goalies and being short staffed in defense

on a side note, we're obviously not committed to the arms race that is going on with the elite teams hungry for CL glory. So I'm assuming real madrid is accepting that we won't win anything for a bit... if that's the case, then developing youth to see what we have and then splash on positions where the kids don't pan out is a plan. Very uncharacteristic plan for Real Madrid hence my skepticism.

but we'll see.

For what it's worth, i dont even think that the club has changed so much in their policy of signing or recruiting players. we still have several world class players in the team, who have won multiple champions leagues, and a group of younger player that we are trying to bring up alongside them. I am fairly certain that it's almost always been the case.

Our mercato is one of opportunity, as with most teams. There are certain areas that i am not happy with, like the lack of a more reliable 4th centerback, but in a way as well, i can understand us trying to give more of a chance to Vallejo for example, who has battled with injuries. He was as highly rated a CB prospect as Spain produced recently.

I have argued here multiple times we need a like for like replacement for Kovacic, but many have made a case for pushing Ceballos forward, with both Valderde and Llorente behind.

I am at a comfortable place with this window because these moves make sense, so long as the coach leverages the players and put forth a way of playing that's inclusive to everyone, and give some of the younger players a platform to grow and to shine.

As far as the supposed arm race going about europe, i would argue our squad is still as good as the top of europe, still has strong as bayern, city, pool, etc... Not even with CR for years where did we have any guarantee to win the champions league. So i dont think we have "given up" on winning that's ridiculous. The argument set forth here is that we want players like Benzema, Bale, Asensio, Isco to increase their level, to fully tap into their potential, along with the existing midfield and defense core we have, to continue winning. It's bold to think that way but in reality, it's no different than the way other clubs like Bayern Munich look at their chances to win the champions league every season.

I don't think we're as good.  The favorites for me in CL are Juve, Man City, Barca and PSG.  We're in the next group with Bayern.  Liverpool is the dark horse as I'm not sure what to make of them yet... they look good though and have spent a ton.

My problem mainly is that we're counting on Bale to be our only match winner and we're getting older in a lot of positions.

We are as good as the lot of them

sportsczy wrote:
My problem mainly is that we're counting on Bale to be our only match winner on the attack.  All the other clubs have at least 2.

lol where are the match winners at City? they have been doing so much match winning in europe recently yes? where were PSG match winners vs us last season? Barca? suarez has been meh for years. Bayern? Lewandowski doesnt score in knockouts lol, robben is done.

You overrate all those teams. Some barely have 1 guy they can count on to deliver in europe, and except for Messi, none is far better than Bale.

Unless i have missed something when watching football in the past 5-6 years, a lot of those boys need to prove themselves before i am going to give them credit here.

Who is the other match winner for City? I know you're counting Aguero, wonder who is the other. Sterling? Sane? Jjuve does have the match winner of all match winners so that make sense and Mandi really does show up for the big games so I like them as one of the favs.

Bayern? There is Lewa who I'm struggling to really put down as a match winner but for argument sake, why not. Who is the other? Kimmch? Robben and Ribery? Nah man, nah. Naaaaah. PSG, well, in theory, they should be beating all and sundry with that attacking trio but I see their midfield and laugh. I see their backline and laugh. I see their matches and know full well Madrid can beat them. Again. Barcelona has Messi and Suarez, who, like Marcelo, shows up in January so yeah, they have 2 match winners there as well.

While I would totally agree with Deez's transfer window activity score (I would go with 5.5), we have as good of a squad as ANY of those clubs mentioned.

In other news, Perez (successfully) got rid of the Mendes camp from Madrid.