There was a rumor out a few weeks ago that Zidane wanted Vinicius to go out on loan. Now after two preseason games, Vinicius has gotten little playing time and even Lucas gets a start before him?

We all know the history of Zidane keeping kids shut out of playing time, suggesting often they are better off out on loan. Obviously, he wants more experienced players on his bench, as evidence this summer.

Right now he has Vinicius, Rodrygo, Kubo and Brahim battling for positions in the squad. Rodrygo and Kubo can’t make it to 1st team until Valverde gets his Spanish passport, likely September and even then it can only be one of them!

With Asensio likely not going to be included in squad, the need for these kids is all the more apparent.

However instead of giving Vinicius more playing time, we saw Asensio, Lucas and Bale instead of Vinicius? Does that tell us anything? I think Vinicius will be on squad but it looks like it will be a bench roll suggesting Zidane will bring him into lineup slowly, like he did with Asensio in his first year. We should also expect same treatment with Brahim, Rodrygo and Kubo, although in the ladder case, it will have to wait a year.

With Asensio out, I think that is the opening for Isco to be a starter (If he can regain form). Although I still think this last starting spot will be rotated depending on configuration used. However with Asensio out, it does open the door to Lucas (god help us), or even Bale (that would prohibit the acquisition of Pogba) and even a remote possibility for James?

rodrygo and Brahim will be registered with castilla and juvenil, they wont have any issues playing for us.

if you are trying to guess what zidane thinks after 2 preseason games, you are wasting your time lol.

what i would say is we know who Zidane likes, and who he doesnt. this is not new.

The old guard of modric, kroos, isco, vasquez, etc... guy who have won for him before and played poorly last year. they are his guys, they are senior players in the squad and Zidane loves hierarchy.

It's fair for him to think that if they play at the level they use to be at, his season will go well. So he has a difficult task of bringing back his guys + integrating young players.

Those young kids have to earn their playing time, nothing will be handed to them. We saw at the end of last season Zidane gave a lot of minutes to Brahim, and Brahim did really good with his time.

I also think that Lucas Vasquez starting has a lot to do with Carvajal struggling on defense. It's unfortunate... but he feels he needs to compensate there.

Hazard and Benzema don't defend so he needs a lot of cover from the other forward.

THAT SAID, i'd start Vini on the right. He's played like a headless chicken a lot though so far. Hoping that turns around.

To be fair to Vinicius he should've gotten a penalty yesterday, so he at least created something.

I'd prefer playing the Brazilian winger who's got actual experience on the right.

Pains me to think how much playing time Vazquez will get this season.

The injury might lead to us playing Benz and Jovic together as the main XI though

Now that Asensio is out the issue is that apart from Vazquez, the only player who has real experience off the right is Bale.. so yeah.

We might as well play De La Fuente

vanDEEZ wrote:Now that Asensio is out the issue is that apart from Vazquez, the only player who has real experience off the right is Bale.. so yeah.

Lol, what a tangled web we weave. Bale has his flaws, hell, a lot of them. But relying on vazquez for a whole season is suicide. And starting 2 strikers is a risky venture as well. Taking into account what has gone on these past few days, it will be interesting to see zidane and gareth's next moves . Lol

Problem with Bale is that he plays 2-3 weeks out of every 2-3 months... he's obviously a good player. But he never plays! That's been his downfall more than anything.

Asensio or not, the issue with the right wing was not fixed this summer.

Would be nice if the price on Pepe or Sane has dropped considering no one is in for them anymore.

Mr Nick09 wrote:Asensio or not, the issue with the right wing was not fixed this summer.

Agreed.

Freeza wrote:We might as well play De La Fuente

De La Fuente can actually control a ball tbh.

Vini looks so much less lethal on the RW.

Asensio was supposed to own that wing this season.

sportsczy wrote:Problem with Bale is that he plays 2-3 weeks out of every 2-3 months... he's obviously a good player. But he never plays! That's been his downfall more than anything.

Another problem is that he in recent years has had a tendency to go through a period of hesitancy in his willingness to make an impact, every time he returns from injury. It's understandable considering how injury prone he's been for us, but it also means that his already limited amount of time being fully fit for action, consists of even less time performing up to the standard that I assume most of us expect from him.

https://mobile.twitter.com/elchiringuitotv/status/1352054420087988228

Its not surprising, this team has showed symptoms of descomposition since the first matchball in Kyev, the people close to Zidane say he's a different Zidane, he's closed off with only relying on his helpers Bettoni and Hamidou, the comunication have descended, its not the same Zidane that transmited happiness, empathy, complicity with the players.

In the Real Madrid dressing rooms there are two groups, the ones that play and the other is of the young ones that are very unhappy, today it was shown that this is not a "TEAM" anymore, some ran and some were neutral.

From what I've consulted, Zidane will not leave, they're thinking about the future, but the future in summer to recover people who are loaned, to make important signings, important sellings, because they know this season is very hard to fix, very very hard.

WTF is he actively trying to sabotage our future?

Zidane has had many fireable moments this season, but he is also coming from winning la liga. It’s the first time we hear locker rooms dissent under Zidane but the people not playing also need to leave the club because they are either not ready or they are terrible like Marcelo and Isco.

The first thing we noticed about Zidane as a coach was how unwilling he was to stick to the same line ups. He was mister rotation, mr. not sticking to the same line up two games in a row. We saw the limitations of such tactic this season and so he started relying more and more on a core of players.

I am not convinced sacking him, even in the summer is the right solution. Almost everyone have gotten opportunities with him and frankly they have not all taken those opportunities. For Perez the gamble is trying to convince Mbappe to join while he is sacking Zidane, and there is no big name coach available out there now.

Is Mbappe supposed to be our saviour now ?

He's closer to Bale than to Cristiano, last thing we need is to splash 200 million on another flop.

He is not but the club believes in the model of signing elite attacking players and Mbappe is next in line in terms of market opportunity, age, marketability, etc... (Haaland too). They are not wrong because you win nothing in Europe without attackers of that level, ie Lewandowski last year, Salah & Mane before, CR etc...

The club has been in a transition phase since CR left, and we won all those CLs. They gambled on young players to help transition the old guard out but they are running into the troubles we see today. Winning la liga last year was good but it seems to me that they were waiting to snag Mbappe to have him lead another European run.

It looks like with Lopetegui they tried to start the transition but then he got sacked and they had to get Zidane back. Zidane probably doesn’t believe in this transition as much as the board because he has a tendency to stick with the old guard. It’s a difference of vision that winning la liga last year pushed to the side, but it’s coming back to the forefront now

I can’t embed from my phone but look at this shit https://twitter.com/cholometr0/status/1352269065251917824?s=21

Vinicius is so tiring, that + the easy goal he missed before 1-1, it’s embarrassing and then you wonder why Zidane sees these things and thinks, I’m better off betting on Hazard than playing this idiot.

It’s fun to beat on Zidane but there are a lot of players in this team also not at the level we expect, their commitment and performances simply isn’t there.

Nick, all those players were purchased by Madrid. All of them.

If you want to know where the blame truly lies, it's on the club, no matter how you spin it.

They bought players who turned out to be not good enough, and even those who showed glimpses of hope, were relegated to the bench through no fault of their own. So clearly here, and objectively speaking, Madrid and their scouting department and their coach have no bleeding idea on how to successfully execute a youth policy.

So either they stop lying to themselves and choose another approach or bring in a coach who's capable of nurturing and developing young players in record time. Either way, they should stop expecting 18-year olds to mature and start goating overnight, all while being glued to the bench. That's unfair to them. That's the unfair to the players. That's unfair to everybody involved.

Even the financial side of things doesn't look very bright. Remember why they chose to adopt this youth policy? It was of course to financially cope with the ever-inflating market by relying less on spending and more on developing young players, right? Well, look at all of their buys and add them up. You'll realize that they have spent a fortune anyway, and for what? For nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Amen!

I’m not going to claim that I know how to nurture young talents any better than a super rich, top football club does, but I do find it puzzling that there’s no clear strategy to how we’ve handled this. From what I can tell, our loan deals with other clubs have been largely successful. It started with Casemiro, and it has kept yielding positive results since then.

Even Mariano had his time in the limelight elsewhere. It’s when we pull these kids back prematurely, that things don’t work out.

I’m a bit salty that we didn’t let Hakimi stay at Dortmund. It’s perfectly understandable that we wanted the higher transfer fee that Inter were willing to offer, but with his development trajectory, it makes me wonder why we didn’t extend the loan deal until he was closer to the finished product - at which time we could’ve sold him for a higher price, or considered taking him back. That’s assuming Zidane wouldn’t have just benched him for CL winners, Marcelo and Carvajal, as long as they’re both fit.

Lopetegui and Solari was, for me, the first indication of the club having no well thought out, concrete plan for the future. I hope they pull themselves together soon. Mistakes happen, but it’s whether or not you learn from them that really matters. Like DoC pointed out, there’s no point in relying on youth to pave the way for the future when the manager is evidently of a different opinion. That’s counter-productive.

Absolutely nothing? I would like to recall you that we just won la liga in 2019-2020 and maybe it’s not a trophy that counts for you.

The club is responsible for everything at the end of the day so, when we win and when things are not going so well, the responsibility is on them. The language on this forum is always so catastrophic for all things concerning Madrid. Yesterday we found out Odegaard wants out and it sounded like we were selling Raul in his prime. Give me a break Odegaard is a nobody in the grand scheme of things.

I look at things differently, I am interested in understanding what the club does and how they make decisions. This is how I choose to approach things because the fact of the matter is that you can complain as much as you want on an Internet forum, but your voice has ZERO weight to how Perez chooses to run the club. Same with me lol, this is why I’m choosing not to put a lot of energy in this

My view the club situation is this: we had historical successes with CR and the band for years and that came to an end. After selling CR they chose to invest in young players to help transition the old squad out. It has had mix successes and a lot of the young players were not able to break through as they expected (I won’t go into the reasons, as they don’t matter end of the day). Now, we are still in a transition that they knew we would be in, while we wait to secure sure thing superstar from the market. In the meantime older players continue to be phased out and we are also figuring which of the young players will stay at the club longer. If the club can sign their main targets like Mbappe and Haaland, I’m certain we will compete to win the CL again.

Who knew Hazard would be such a dud, the pandemic would strike, etc... the team still has many top players. Frankly we still have the core of a team that makes a lot of sense, but the results are not there, that’s just football to me.

I get where you're coming from, to some extent. Of course, I want to believe that the club know what they're doing. These aren't a bunch of amateurs. Or so I like to think. Ironically, I think you're failing to see the bigger picture, though. And whatever the club's intention may have been initially, it's not working out. I imagine they're trying to figure out how to rectify that strategy, as we speak.

We won the league, but I don't think that should paper over the obvious cracks we've been seeing in recent years. Odegaard leaving on loan might not have any substantial consequences either, but it's just the most recent example of how poorly we're handling this transfer strategy of scouting, attracting and developing young prospects over signing established names.

The strategy is interesting, and I think modern football has shown an increasing trend of scouting young, lesser known prospects as a more risky, but potentially more rewarding strategy than competing with everyone else for top players in their prime. It's benefiting the clubs who succeed at it, but it's not something that's traditionally benefited us.

We're not Dortmund. You'll probably never see us sign someone like Jude Bellingham or Gio Reyna, and immediately give them a nod of confidence from the coach. Both players are teenagers, and probably wouldn't have been good enough to play at Real Madrid based on their current quality, but they've improved exponentially from being able to play regularly. Not only does it build confidence, experience and momentum, but it's the best way to develop and prepare them for the future. This approach is much more relevant to today's football, than it's been in the past, and so I have some understanding of why the club opted to follow it. However, we seem to largely ignore the development part, which I believe is the key to making such a strategy successful.

The likes of Van Dijk, Son, Mane.. I wouldn't be surprised if some members of GL claim that such players were already household names at the time of being purchased by a top club, but they all showed a ton of potential early in their careers, and with the exception of VVD, they were bought for relatively low sums.

But there needs to be a system in place for these players to develop under optimal conditions. The way I see it, there's a very clear issue in how we approach nurturing and easing these players into the team. We've introduced them to first
team action prematurely, only to crush their confidence by not giving them time to find momentum. This is especially problematic when we pull back players from clubs where they were excelling and developing smoothly. It doesn't benefit anyone.

You're very quick to boil the reasoning behind these actions down to all of these players not being good enough, and I'd maybe entertain that train of thought if I thought they were given a fair chance, particularly if we take their age into consideration. And that's the whole point, isn't it? Take young, talented players, and nurture them into the best, finished product they can be. That's not what we've been doing, at all.

Cristiano Ronaldo slotted right into our team when he arrived as a 23 year old. We shouldn't hold similar standards up to our more recent signings, who are not only younger than he was, but haven't benefited from the process he went through before he became a regular starter at United.

Why do we discuss these things, although we have no impact on what actually happens? For the same reason that you like to talk about transfer targets that the club may not even have any interest in. We're just voicing our opinions.

Yeah, I don't think anyone had predicted that Hazard would be this poor for us. Then again, it's another reason why I sometimes wonder what our scouting department are thinking these days. Hazard has a history of being injured and inconsistent. He made up for it by being unplayable when fit and performing in spurts at a time. Even if we assume that he'd perform up to his usual standard for us, I never saw his profile of player as the type we needed to prioritize.

Would it have solved our issues if he was performing? I don't know who's been shouldering our goalscoring duties this season, but I would imagine that responsibility is still up in the air. Hazard has never been some ruthless goalscorer. The goal statistics speak in his favor, but ruthless is not the right way to explain his way of going about scoring goals on a regular basis. I think that was evident when he complained about having to play as a cf at Chelsea.

[quote]Frankly we still have the core of a team that makes a lot of sense, but the results are not there, that’s just football to me./quote]

I can't agree with that. The result went our way as recently as last season, as you were quick to point out. I'm of the opposite opinion. I don't think we should take that league win as a sign that we don't have substantial issues that need to be addressed. I'm obviously not saying that we should take such trophies and successes for granted, but the stars really aligned for us after the Covid break, and I don't expect it to do the same if we're still messing around with an incredibly flawed youth transfer strategy, a couple of years down the road.