Healing: 21 May 2025

A Farewell Letter Edition of the Daily Merengue

A Series of Farewell Letters From Juninho.

別れの挨拶の練習をしているだけ

I’m just practicing how to say goodbye.

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, KungFuZizou, NeRObutBlanco, Felipejack, and Juninho (the “The Greatest Mod”).

Letter #2 — Healing

Dear MM

I’m Vegan Now. Not in the literal sense. But yea today no words come to mind that feel right so I’m just going to share this quote from a TV Show I once watched “Kelsey, in this terrifying world, all we have are the connections we make.” So yea I’m Vegan Now…and maybe we all at MM should be too.

Jude Bellingham. At first when I read the news about Jude finally getting his shoulder surgery (an injury he suffered in November 2023) after the CWC, I was disappointed and annoyed with the club. I was frustrated by our priorities. Yes, the CWC is potentially a huge revenue opportunity and commercially is important in capturing the US market. However, these are truly meaningless games. It will be great to win the CWC but it would be better to win La Liga or the Champions League. In many ways, the CWC are glorified friendlies — the Nations League of club football. So why on earth, would we have Jude Bellingham miss 3 months of real La Liga / UCL competitions while attending an otherwise Mickey Mouse tournament? Xabi.

When you actually think about the process of transforming this team into Xabi’s image, the CWC has suddenly become a crucial tournament and timeframe. First, the completion of the competition is 2-3 weeks before the start of the La Liga season. Therefore, if Real Madrid win the competition most of our players will be removed from an actual Pintus-style preseason training as FIFA /UEFA regulations demand that the players receive a 2+ week vacation. This virtually makes the CWC, Xabi’s best opportunity to test personnel combinations, institute proper tactical structures, and determine if any additional transfers are required for this team. The latter portion is crucial for the timing…transfers! As we all know, news has circulated about Real Madrid potentially making a galactico midfield signing. This signing would need to happen likely in the latter half of the summer transfer window and it would behoove Xabi + the board to have a better understanding the current midfield’s mechanics prior to investing 100M+ into a new shiny toy.

This then makes Jude’s inclusion in the CWC highly significant. Jude’s position will be a debate throughout the 25/26 and it actually may be best for Xabi to figure this out during the glorified friendlies of the CWC rather than the real competitions in La Liga. Yes, it isn’t ideal for Jude to miss real competitions and we’ll need to prepare a replacement for this extended time period. However, we will at least have a semblance of idea of who that replacement needs to be and where that replacement will actually play. If Jude were to miss the CWC and be ready for the beginning of La Liga, we’d need to make these decisions in real-time during a more valuable competition.

Transfers – Enzo. There’s been an influx of transfer news in the past 24 hours, but I’m just going to quickly touch on this one. The Enzo transfer makes zero sense to me from a football sense but more importantly from a financial sense. From a footballing sense, yes I understand that Enzo can to some extent be a deep-lying playmaker and provide us a semblance of Kroos’ metronomic abilities. But I’m a bit worried about his defensive work-rate and prowess in the middle of the park. Sure, he would likely be surrounded by Fede / Tchou and Jude, but he’d still be another player who comes with a few defensive questions. Can this team support Vini, Mbappe, Enzo, and TAA as part-time defenders? I’m not entirely sure. This also doesn’t dive again into the team dynamic. I’m not entirely sure how Kylian Mbappe (captain of the French NT) accepts Enzo into his locker room after the extremely controversial IG story and derogatory Argentina song…I’m not sure how Tchouameni / Cama / Mendy feel about it. It just feels like asking for more issues than needed.

From a financial perspective, this deal makes zero sense. Enzo still has 6 years on his contract so he won’t be cheap. He was also purchased for around 100M, so Chelsea won’t sell him for cheap either. I know some of you are about to say “But Juni can’t we just swap Rodrygo for Enzo??!” Maybe. That would absolutely reduce his price from a Madrid POV. However, I actually don’t see a world where Chelsea sign Rodrygo due to his wages. Chelsea have been pretty adamant about getting young players on low wages with insanely long contracts. Rodrygo at the moment would be Chelsea’s 2nd highest salaried player and following a new contract would likely be their highest paid player by at least 30-50K per week. Could Chelsea afford that? Yes. Does it make sense to introduce these higher salaries into their ecosystem? I’m not sure. IT’s not even guaranteed that they’ll have CL football next year.

Anyway, let’s see where this goes.

Nico. I’m not going to spend too much time on this transfer because there’s so much contradictory information around it with 50% of journalists laughing that this is absolutely BS and another 50% saying that there are conditions for this to happen. I like Nico but I’m leaning towards this being a bit BS simply because its not only MARCA but its MARCA without an author. If this was really really a big scoop, someone would want their name attached to the news for future reporting credit…

Anyway, assuming this is somewhat true but also globally looking at all the influx of transfer news. I wonder if some of this is being strategically placed in order to expedite the departure of a prominent Madrid player? This is of course all speculation. But it’s just interesting how in the matter of 48hrs there are reports of potentially a new RW, a galactico midfielder as well as the potential for an additional CB signing. Real Madrid have already officially signed Huijsen and we’re in the process of likely signing Carreras (which I’m pretty sure is done) and TAA (which we all know is basically done). This is already an expenditure of nearly 80-100M (if we think of Dean + Carreras likely transfer fees and only god knows what TAA’s signing bonus is). This has happened without any sales.

If these additional signings rumors bear any truth, we’d expect a massive sale. Like a massive sale of at least one player. The likely scapegoat is Rodrygo with recent news but even his 100-120M value doesn’t cover all of these signings. We would need to expect additional sales or practically Saudi money. Maybe this is just the board putting pressure on Rodrygo to make up his mind of whether to stay or Vini on signing his renewal or the folks like Tchouameni / Camavinga to find a new team. Or maybe Alaba / Rudi are being persuaded by Saudi offers. It’ll be a funny summer to say the least.

But anyway there’s a good chance none of this happens. I’m just trying to read between the lines.

Like how are paying for all of this?

Sincerely,

Juninho

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“I pray you win all the battles you don’t talk about”