Klaus mikaelson

what he left running.. madeira, a kid and a wall. he'd kick the ball, the wall would send it back, and he'd go again. nobody was coaching him. the wall just didn't care how he felt about it. then it was twenty-odd years of that. the stadiums got the goals, but the real work was in gyms nobody was watching, at hours most people are still asleep. and now he's decided when it ends. that's the one thing he never got to train for, and he still managed to do it his way. talent gets you noticed. staying stubborn long enough is what made him this. shirt goes on the hanger. the wall's still there though, and somebody's already kicking at it.

como, bayer leverkusen, fulham clubs that were made to expose the casuals who try to be different from everyone else, who have no soul, and who try to stand out with football takes when they only ever see these teams through highlights.

as great as his season was overall, this never gets close to being the best ucl campaign ever. in fact, it's not even his best ucl campaign ever.

jude 2023/24 > jude 2026/27

you guys look really miserable ...

we haven't done anything yet... we're still just warming up...

we should phrase it like this. it's not that real madrid should've sold him. it's that he himself should've taken that step and gone. and started from scratch. he'd already won everything there was to win with madrid. he should've just gone to the premier league and tried that kind of pressure. that would've made him mature in record time. we even saw how that played out with erling haaland. he should've taken that step. staying in madrid was a stupid decision for him.

he shouldn't stay on the left. like, it's so over for him. he should be the guy who learns how to play centrally, and not just hold the ball and pin the center backs and all that. he needs to learn how to play in crowded spaces. that's all. the years of him hugging the touchline and just sprinting his way up to the final third are over. he's not that guy anymore. and it's not about him being finished or him not being physically built for that standard anymore. it's just that simple. oppositions figured him out. they figured him out. they know he doesn't even know what he's doing. he's just invested in his emotions, and that's it.

i really miss rodrygo. really. his place in the team is just so evident. the guy creates something between the lines out of nothing. rotating possession with mbappé or whoever the striker is. giving surprising through balls. shots on target from outside the box. he's just him , baby zico.

bellingham is the kind of midfielder with a fantastic ability to influence the game when it comes to scoring goals. and as long as we don't stop him from doing it, he's gonna bail us out of trouble in countless ways. playing him with that kind of large-scale freedom is better than sticking him to one position.

there's not much to say about vinicius' comeback because there's not much new. we saw the things you already knew we'd see. but the way things are going, i think mourinho should make a bold move: either change his position and make him learn to play up front, more centrally or in the half-spaces, or make him compete with yan diomandé for minutes. because it's really bad to kill a momentum like diomandé's like that when he's feeling it..

mbappé in particular shouldn't have played today, in my opinion, because as long as you overuse him, he's gonna cause you trouble. he's gonna try to play that kind of roaming freedom, but at a really slow tempo. he doesn't move the ball as quickly as he should. so i think real madrid should do something about him being this overused, because they're making him look bad.

what i can actually highlight is the kind of reactions we've had after conceding a goal. that's really improved this season compared to last season or the past 2 years. we're not a side that watches the opposition score against us and just sits back and watches anymore.

vinicius' physical build has changed a lot. he's now in the perfect position to finally end his time on the left side for good. he really needs to follow in dembélé's footsteps.

i don't know what zidane told camavinga about his positional discipline, but it's working. all that's left is for him to teach him how to adjust his tempo.

i disagree. because he'll be held to the standards of how strong he is as a striker, not how capable he is at playing football. so he'll be asked to be explosive, strong, do the hold-up play, be forced to shoot from far out a lot. it's not the best environment for benzema to play in. if anything, he should've played somewhere that values his football intelligence and capabilities. choosing barcelona would've been better in that sense.

i'm happy with how he's been handling things so far. his experience will never fail him when it comes to separating the obvious from the complex. the only thing i don't like is the ambiguity in his priority order within the squad. mourinho always gives you contradictory signals about who matters most to him.

mbappé doesn't reject structure, he only accepts a flexible, smart structure.

now we can say atlético's puppet enrique riquelme won't dream of having any say in the running of real madrid anymore. pérez won big time.