Spanish La Liga 2024/2025

pupivn

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Bellingham + Mbappe would not work, they need Modric playing every games, no Kroos anymore.
 

Jnr

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Humiliating night for Carlo. Perez is one angry billionaire tonight .

And Barca have done it with financial difficulties , Spotify saved their asses and they are recovering from years and years of overspending on trash and just realized they can take a new Messi regen from their academy for free.
 

Kramerica Industries

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It's not just Yamal from their academy either. Cubarsí, Peña, and Casado all played in their academy as well. Olmo played in their academy years ago. It's kinda funny that Madrid's academy is the one known as "La Fabrica" because Barcelona's is the one that is a true factory of elite talent.
 

Jnr

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78 000 fans, but zero atmosphere. Watch Monza-Venezia tomorrow for example, there's more noise there.
 

Damageplan

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By the way it would be interesting to check stats to find a player caught in offside more than Mbappe this game.
In his defense he is wasted played as striker.
 

FCBarca

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Humiliating night for Carlo. Perez is one angry billionaire tonight .

And Barca have done it with financial difficulties , Spotify saved their asses and they are recovering from years and years of overspending on trash and just realized they can take a new Messi regen from their academy for free.
Dooomed they said :ROFLMAO:
 
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Jnr

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Barca's stadium will be nicer too when complete. Perez might start another building upgrade this year.
 

Alex de Large

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Is getting quite difficult to hate on guys like Lamine, Cubarsi, Pedri, Casadó or... others like Rapinha who is a monster right now etc..
Not much to do with the arrogance of Xavi Hernandez or others, which made Barcelona a team to hate... and.. i REALLY REALLY HATE Vinicius, his way of despise rivals, making fun of rival crowds etc...

On the other hand, we already discussed Madrid losing Kroos. Can remind of Galacticos 2004-2007 when they SOLD Makelele to buy Beckham. Mbappe is way better than Beckam but he is the most similar player to Vinicius possilbe!! On paper looks amazing, on real life it sucks.
 

Il Drago

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Hansi have smashed 2 UCL favorites in 1 week. I think high line defense can be your doom in UCL , so you'll never know, but Barca entered the discussions tonight.

Flick is a good coach. People didn't really rate him because of his disastrous spell at Germany NT but at Bayern he had done a tremendous job. He inherited a mess from Kovac and he won 2 league titles and CL in his two seasons at München. He only left Bayern because he had a fall out with Salihamidzic and Uli Hoeneß.

His biggest strength is he focuses a lot on his team fitness so even though he has a risky approach on defence he can count on his players to suffocate opponents with high pressing and intensity. This is hard to implement on international level but at a club level this approach can make a huge difference.
 

Kramerica Industries

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Is getting quite difficult to hate on guys like Lamine, Cubarsi, Pedri, Casadó or... others like Rapinha who is a monster right now etc..
Not much to do with the arrogance of Xavi Hernandez or others, which made Barcelona a team to hate... and.. i REALLY REALLY HATE Vinicius, his way of despise rivals, making fun of rival crowds etc...

On the other hand, we already discussed Madrid losing Kroos. Can remind of Galacticos 2004-2007 when they SOLD Makelele to buy Beckham. Mbappe is way better than Beckam but he is the most similar player to Vinicius possilbe!! On paper looks amazing, on real life it sucks.

We're seeing play out in real time the importance of squad dynamics and profile over just accumulation of talent with no cohesive plan. On its own, I'm entirely fine with stacking talent, but Madrid brought in Mbappé the same summer that they lost Kroos, Joselu, and Nacho. I'm not going to litigate about that, all three wanted to leave for their own reasons, Madrid isn't to blame there. The problems are entirely in how they've reacted. Joselu scored 18 goals last season, they very obviously replaced that number and then some with Mbappé, but they didn't replace his profile at all. They don't have an aerial threat on crosses and they don't have someone with that natural strikers' instinct. You generally want to force teams to defend more facets of attack, but there is no team in the world that has to gameplan for Madrid's aerial game, it doesn't exist. Their way of replacing Kroos has been giving nearly-40-year-old Luka Modric more playing time than he had a year ago. They don't have a playmaking mid (that Ancelotti trusts) anywhere else in the team. Their way of replacing Nacho was [404 centerback not found].

This isn't even touching on the problems created by Mbappé and Vini both preferring to operate from the same areas on the field, and now having to adapt off each other, it doesn't touch on that you now have two players who generally aren't much involved in the defensive work whereas last year it was only Vini who was given license to stay further forward, and it doesn't touch on the star player dynamics of handling the glamor things like who gets PK duty and the chance to pad their goal stats.

There is the part of me that thinks it would be foolish gamble that Mbappé's career profile will flop at Madrid. He signed a five year contract. I remember when Modric had a disappointing first season there, shit, even CR7's "worst" season in terms of goal scoring at Madrid was in his first season. He's proven too much throughout his career previously to be written off anytime soon, he's earned the benefit of more time. He could still come good in time. At the same time...regrettably, I find myself writing about Madrid a lot on the internet and have developed a lot of opinions about them, and one of them that I said a lot during the summer was that they had about as bad a transfer window as they could've had where one of things they did was "sign Kylian Mbappé". Lots of people were skeptical about that claim at the time, but we're 2.5 months into the season and I only feel further emboldened in my stance now. I've seen nothing to tell me I was wrong.
 

Adriano@10

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Barca's stadium will be nicer too when complete. Perez might start another building upgrade this year.
Who really cares when the atmosphere is better in any serie B stadium? And that applies to boh barca nd real what good is the best stadium if you have the shittiest fans?
 

thatdude

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Hansi have smashed 2 UCL favorites in 1 week. I think high line defense can be your doom in UCL , so you'll never know, but Barca entered the discussions tonight.
His Bayern side that won CL played the same way. They gave up chances but for whatever reason no team ever caught them out before they were able to get a lead. Then once they were in the lead they would absolutely pick you apart.
 

Alex de Large

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We're seeing play out in real time the importance of squad dynamics and profile over just accumulation of talent with no cohesive plan. On its own, I'm entirely fine with stacking talent, but Madrid brought in Mbappé the same summer that they lost Kroos, Joselu, and Nacho. I'm not going to litigate about that, all three wanted to leave for their own reasons, Madrid isn't to blame there. The problems are entirely in how they've reacted. Joselu scored 18 goals last season, they very obviously replaced that number and then some with Mbappé, but they didn't replace his profile at all. They don't have an aerial threat on crosses and they don't have someone with that natural strikers' instinct. You generally want to force teams to defend more facets of attack, but there is no team in the world that has to gameplan for Madrid's aerial game, it doesn't exist. Their way of replacing Kroos has been giving nearly-40-year-old Luka Modric more playing time than he had a year ago. They don't have a playmaking mid (that Ancelotti trusts) anywhere else in the team. Their way of replacing Nacho was [404 centerback not found].

This isn't even touching on the problems created by Mbappé and Vini both preferring to operate from the same areas on the field, and now having to adapt off each other, it doesn't touch on that you now have two players who generally aren't much involved in the defensive work whereas last year it was only Vini who was given license to stay further forward, and it doesn't touch on the star player dynamics of handling the glamor things like who gets PK duty and the chance to pad their goal stats.

There is the part of me that thinks it would be foolish gamble that Mbappé's career profile will flop at Madrid. He signed a five year contract. I remember when Modric had a disappointing first season there, shit, even CR7's "worst" season in terms of goal scoring at Madrid was in his first season. He's proven too much throughout his career previously to be written off anytime soon, he's earned the benefit of more time. He could still come good in time. At the same time...regrettably, I find myself writing about Madrid a lot on the internet and have developed a lot of opinions about them, and one of them that I said a lot during the summer was that they had about as bad a transfer window as they could've had where one of things they did was "sign Kylian Mbappé". Lots of people were skeptical about that claim at the time, but we're 2.5 months into the season and I only feel further emboldened in my stance now. I've seen nothing to tell me I was wrong.
I don't think failure, but we will probably already saw Mbappe prime (2018-2023)
 

Kramerica Industries

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I don't think failure, but we will probably already saw Mbappe prime (2018-2023)

I've expressed the exact same thought previously. The aging curve isn't quite what people think it is. Your athletic peak is usually somewhere around 23-25. Obviously your intellectual peak tends to be later. How the latter helps to balance the former is unique from one player to the next, as is whether your athleticism only gradually declines or if it happens more abruptly. But I've said on a few occasions that, not getting Mbappé until now, that there's every chance the player Madrid was chasing is not quite the player they'll have gotten. That was all said independent of anything that's happened so far this season because these were thoughts I expressed before the season began.
 
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