433 Part 1: 29 Jul 2025

Another Juninho Edition of the Daily Merengue

A Devil:

“Not a devil...just an ordinary man” — Juninho

Welcome to The Daily Merengue — a place where you can feel free to discuss all things football. Do not be alarmed by the overt RMCF bias. It’s in the name!

Shoutout to the Mods who do a fantastic job, Valyrian Steel, Ezek XI, KungFuZizou, NeRObutBlanco, Felipejack, and Juninho.

Quick Transfer News

“When things get dark and your number get called. And you look side to side like, “What did they say?”. And it ain’t the Lord’s voice and then you realize…

That the Devil is talkin’ to you.”

Real quick but this is super long.

Transfer Rumors. Rodrygo’s entourage was approached by Tottenham. Discrepancies in reports on whether they rejected Spurs because they’re a small club or not. Konate seems willing to talk to Madrid but unclear if he’ll reject the new salary proposal. Alaba isn’t leaving.

The 433: Part One

Formation. Okay — no thrills since this is going to be long a converstaion that will span potentially 2-3 days. It’s just what’s been on my mind lately and I believe this is somewhat a discussion that occurred a few weeks ago.

So at some point in MM and throughout various discussions on RM Twitter / Internet / Reddit, there have been discussions of formation design for our core players and what works. This discussion is normally based on our midfield structure (to be discussed later), our lack of a RW (Rodrygo 1 goal in 27 games but more goals than the LW in 2025), how we have 3 LWs but aren’t PSG, and various issues regarding our fullbacks. This discussion also often appears quite rigid in structure as well without really detailing the fluidity of responsibilities without really understanding that the 433 is a formation. It’s just a starting place. It’s like saying I have a house. A house is a structure but internally a house can function in various different ways with differing size rooms, etc etc.

I guess as a quick disclaimer, this section isn’t going to bash how we talk about the 433 or really whether its a viable formation (I personally don’t think it or any 3 forward system works for our current personnel). It’s to just add another perspective to the mix.

Anyway let’s start but by tackling a key issue as we dive into our potential formation variations.

KFZ’s Rodrygo Elephant In Room — Vini x Mbappe. Most of you are going to either disagree with me, call me a Vini / Mbappe hater, or a Vini / Mbappe stan, or all of the above and that’s fine. However, in my opinion a 433 can never work at Real Madrid because Vini x Mbappe don’t work as a pair. In fact, no formation works with Vini + Mbappe. And this is because neither of the pair defends. Yesterday, I mentioned that I’m somewhat tired of MM mentioning “pressing” as a catch-all word for defending because I sometimes feel like we use it as an excuse. Yes, not every team needs to gegenpress like Liverpool / PSG. Real Madrid has won an insurmountable amount of trophies without pressing. But still every team needs to defend and this is something that this front two doesn’t really do.

Quick Disclaimer: I’m actually amenable to one of them not defending but not both. It’s not sustainable for two players on the pitch to lack defensive responsibilities. I’m not sure if I even care which one but it has to be one.

To support my speculation that both don’t defend, let’s just quickly look at the tape because that may be more convincing. If we quickly look at some footage from the Arsenal CL game you’ll see my core issue with both on the pitch together. They fail at completing the basics:

You’ll see here that positionally Mbappe half-heartedly engages in a press in the corner. Vini who should have moved towards the Partey at the pivot instead but does only god really knows what and then Mbappe doesn’t engage with Saliba and Arsenal are gone with little tracking back from the forward.

Here we’ll see Vini just pretty much walk while Mbappe performs a light press. It’s all around useless action. Again, this is a collective issue but it’s a prominent issue and we faced similar problems against PSG. You’ll have to rewatch the highlight clips since I can’t find accessible twitter cuts, but against PSG there were multiple times where one pass went to Vitinha, Nuno Mendes or Hakimi, and our forwards provided zero backtracking pressure. This consistently compromised our midfield who are outnumbered on the flanks and in the middle. And this was consistently our issue last year…

Below you can also take a quick look at their defensive stats to see that they’re similarly bad. And before you harp on duels!!! Note that duels is an offensive / defensive term. IF Vini dribbles past a player it is counted as a successful duel. I honestly dont know why they do this but it’s stupid.

Now to Vini (since everyone has pretty much given up on Mbappe which tbh isn’t fair). The question here is whether Vini who did use to defend can recapture his glory days. This is possible, but to be honest I’m a bit skeptical. If you take a minute to peruse Fbref, you’ll see that Vini’s per90 defensive stats aren’t dramatically different from the 23/24 season to the 24/25 season. In some areas he’s actually improved such as challenges, tackles in the final third, and tackles + interceptions. In some areas there’s a bit of a drop off like tackles won. However, for the most part Vini of 24/25 isn’t statistically different than 23/24 Balon D’Or Vini from a defensive POV. Now both seasons have a massive drop off from 21/22 Vini (imo prime Vini), where Vini was a defensive stalwart. So we do know he has it in him…but again that was 4 years ago.

If we go to just the most recent tape, Vini did occasionally press without Mbappe on the pitch during the CWC. There were spurts of Vini starting games by running 10x speed at defenders with Gonzalo and taking the game by storm. However, it’s easy to press and run forward the first 15-20 mins of a game. The real question is are you running with a similar fervor backwards to defend a marauding RB in the 50th min or 75min. And here we at times saw a drop off from Vini. Against Pachuca, Vini was placed into a CF position to allow GG to better effectively defend the flank. Against, Al-Hilal both flanks were pretty easily bypassed partially due to an ineffective press but also because of a lack of tracking back for both flanks. We had less of this as a structural issue against Salzburg but it appeared at times against Juve where we were early on easily bypassed.

Now I’ll note — this may be a harsh take. Sure, you’d expect most forward’s work rate to drop off especially for defensive work. Also, Mbappe is at fault too. And honestly, Mbappe may at times be at more fault. This could also just be a recent development of the contract negotiations going sideways and other life factors unrelated to football.

Nevertheless, and my main point when we discuss future formations. No team can survive with two non defensive factors. We could play a 352, 442, 433, 5212, it doesn’t matter. We’ll always have our midfield compromised and then our defensive line outnumbered. So it feels like we’re going to have to make a choice. It feels like one is going to have to be benched or sold. It feels like we’ll have to construct a new means for our future stars. Because, I’m not entirely sure how you incentivize them to do a task that they could get away not doing elsewhere. While being paid the same and potentially winning similar accolades.

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“My apologies…I thought my time was up.”