El Pajarito: Federico Valverde

God bless fede for his athleticism but I long for the day that he can finally play LCM and be given the opportunity to cultivate his ability to dictate play from the Kroos zone. Was watching some highlights of Uruguay vs Peru recently and it reminded me of what i've always felt: I don't like seeing Fede play as a right centre midfielder or right midfielder. When he does that it feels like he is being used to make up for our weaknesses in attack, midfield, and defense on that side of the pitch, but he's being used in a bit of a brutish and work horse sort of way.

Truth be told, Fede isn't particularly nimble in tight spaces and he is nowhere near as refined as the elite like Kroos or Modric when it comes to turning and dribbling in tight spaces and he looks a bit awkward on the right more often than not to me, but when given an opportunity on the LCM zone like with Solari or with Tabarez at the NT sometimes, we can see more Schweinsteigerish sort of variety the way I see it. I'd actually prefer to see him less in advanced/in between the lines/final third spaces, because again, he's really been used as a jack of all trades the last few seasons on the right side because it is so abysmal and because I think his technical limitations are just all the more apparent on the right, while his full arsenal is not being developed/seen.





Camavinga and Fede are good but we still need another B2B sort of midfielder with good attacking variety and physicality.

Future captain in the making

Kid is present and future. I always knew he was a "champions league winning footballer" type of talent. Next ones he wins he should be playing LCM.

Something about the generally unappreciated yet fundamentally all encompassing influence and responsibility of a great centre midfielder has always really resonated with me. The heart of the team. A position that could potentially embody and represent the spirit of a team like no other. By the 11/12 season (my second season as a Madridista) I held an affinity for what Xabi Alonso did on the pitch and how he did it that naturally made me very excited for the prospect of the newly acquired Nuri Sahin. In my eyes, his successor.



At that time I thought that if I had ever been a footballer I would have liked to play like them and help mold and embody the spirit of a team the way I thought they did. They were my reference point.

An elegant, serene, and stoic deep-lying playmaker, my hope was that Sahin would be so well integrated by the end of the season that we would eventually see him be critical in a late Champions League night down the stretch, ideally one where he, Alonso, and Ozil could somehow take us to victory via an exotic Basque/Turkish-German hybrid train that could dominate the midfield. To my heart crushing dismay though, by the end of that awaited champions league night, it wasn't Alonso, it wasn't Ozil, and it definitely wasn't Sahin who had taken the tie.

It was another titanic midfielder all together who would swallow those three whole.

Since then, I knew that I would always want a midfielder like him. He was my new North Star. I didn't want a new Xabi Alonso, in perpetuity, I wanted him.

Here was a player who looked like he was everywhere and like he could do anything, and his team was as much a mirror image of him, as he of it.

That summer, Mourinho may have gotten a similar impression as I had that Champions League night and we were thankfully gifted by the gods someone quite similar yet very different, with his own set of idiosyncrasies that would go on to represent and lead a golden generation, the type not seen in Europe for many years.



For me personally though, something was off. As the years went on I went on to see Luka Modric as someone who even surpassed the expectations that were originally born out of that infamous Champions League night I witnessed in 2012. Modric was a god of his own, and being already 27, he never felt like a successor to anyone. He was too idiosyncratic, he was his own type of guiding star.

As the years went by, I waited for a midfielder to join our ranks who I could follow from the start and who I could watch grow on from his youth to become... him.

First it was Illarramendi.



Then it was Kroos.



Kovacic.



Casemiro.



Hell, even Jose f*cking Rodriguez.



and not to forget Gundogan who was strongly rumored with Madrid up till the beginning of the 13/14 season where he hit a set of injuries that severely put his career at risk.




But not one of em, ultimatley really reminded me... of him.

Then one day, on a random summer afternoon in 2015, I saw a new article had been posted by AS. We had apparently signed a new young midfielder. Obviously, I had to click on the article and its low res videos of the player immediately. He was tall, he looked very athletic, he was very young, and he didn't look like you could necessarily pigeon-hole him into a one position or one stereotype of a player... but... in my glee... I somehow thought I new better.

There he was.

https://as.com/futbol/2015/05/23/primera/1432410922_468802.html

Since that day, I decided to take on a gamble. It was him, or it was no one.

From Castilla, to the Uruguay NT, to Deportivo La Coruna, to his first preseason games with the first team with Julen Lopetegui, I followed his every move on the pitch, and there wasn't a moment that I didn't think that it was him.

There was a catch though. As if to perfectly mirror the early career path of the North Star that I had followed for years, Federico was to be relegated away from what I always had thought of as his more ideal midfield slot into a right midfield hybridized position that would nonetheless come to help shape his appreciation by the public and his formation as a player as a versatile, intense, all encompassing footballer.

Fast forward through 18/19, 19/20, 20/21, 21/22, 22/23, and on to the present day and we are now finally starting to realize what happens when you follow the North Star.

Finally refracted into focus, finally allowed to play starting from that deeper, behind the ball midfield zone that I have always wished for him...

Finally, here is a player who looks like he is everywhere and like he can do anything, and his team, with its youthful, bright, dynamic, physical, intense, passionate, and contagiously optimistic spirit, is as much a mirror image of him, as he of it.

Finally... my Schweinsteiger.

Fede Valverde vs Atletico:

• 129 touches
• 104/107 accurate passes
• 12/12 long passes completed
• 4 duels won
• 2 chances created
• 3 interceptions
• 4 tackles pic.twitter.com/jy3HrdblHS

— TC (@totalcristiano) January 10, 2024

Fede Valverde vs Atletico De Madrid pic.twitter.com/aEwk9PHi3I

— (@killeures) January 10, 2024

Only people who think Fede Valverde is underrated and Real Madrid fans are allowed to like and Rt this tweet. pic.twitter.com/PvXYHpHpYx

— H110. (@SchnitzelKroos) January 10, 2024