Fairytale Friendlies

Now THAT’s what a friendly’s supposed to be like!

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Instead of a lone insane fan willing to charge a moving golf-cart, you get hoardes of fans putting a stop to the operations of a shopping mall as they trail not pretty boy Cristiano Ronaldo… but Jose Mourinho (who supposedly insisted that George Clooney would be the best man to play him in a biopic)

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Instead of solitary pictures with one Will Ferrell, you get 101 kids to run around the pitch with Benzema, Xabi Alonso and Co.

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And of course, the best part: instead of waiting for a 3-goal blitz from Ronaldo within 15 minutes to get a 3-1 victory, we get ourselves an orgasmic 7-1 win.

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Mourinho has had his pre-season: UCLA, serious training, tactical experiments, MLS, Mexican and European sparring partners with solid (*cough* boring *cough*), convincing wins.

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Now Florentino is having his: a few billion asian fans going nuts for Real Madrid and letting Barca know how they feel about the Cules, setting up international relations with foreign football academies, sponsored events and of course… 7-1 goalscoring orgies.

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All in one summer!

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Whoever said that Mourinho the Paragmatist and Perez the Social-Marketing Butterfly would never live comfortably together are probably changing their minds now.

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Seriously, though I do acknowledge the importance of serious ‘Mourinho Road Trips’ to develop team chemistry away from European paparazzi or Asian fans that come in Hoardes, I welcome Real Madrid’s return to this continent. It is after all high time for the merengues to show Asian Fans what quality football really is: beyond the we-are-so-awesome-because-we’re-from-England nonsense that we get from EPL teams or the stench of patronizing, self-congratulatory and self-righteous mumbo jumbo that come from teams that get professional diving classes from mammals of other species.

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The message is nice and simple:

“Hello. We are Real Madrid. Thanks for paying us millions to show up. And to express our thanks, here are our star players to score 7 goals of pure eye-candy for you to enjoy. Enjoy the show. You are all Welcome.”

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But beyond the entertainment on offer in last night’s matches, here are some thoughts on some key individuals from last night’s game:

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Benze-CAT

Benz in Boots? The Frenchman seems to have become much more ferocious that that

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I disagree with this whole notion that dogs are better hunter than cats. I also disagree that Benzema has transitioned into another species (dog). His aloof, quiet demeanor still makes him very much ‘cat-like’ – except this time, he’s no Garfield or Puss-in-Boots – he’s evolved instead into those cats you see on Nat Geo who take down wilder beasts for fun (The Lyon King?). Now capable of combining his exquisite technical ability with constant awareness, alertness and constant involvement: he is fast becoming the player we were all expecting to see when he joined us. It was all on show last night: always available to receive passes, aware of goalscoring chances for his teammates (e.g. Khedira’s goal), fully linked up and ready to finish his teammates’ attacking plays (see his first goal off CRon’s backheel pass), and with full confidence in his superb technical abilities (e.g. his second goal is a display both of audacity and impeccable finishing skill).

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Higua-DOG

Benze-Cat has always been the more talented player. But Pipita till now has been the better player on the back of his workrate and the intangibles he brings to the team. One season after playing under Mourinho for Bezema while poor Pipita is on the sidelines with an injury and here we are: with Pipita looking like he will face an uphill battle to be the first choice striker. Over the last few games, Higua-DOG, with his string of missed sitters has looked more like Snoopy rather than the ravenous wolf that he used to be when healthy and in form. It’s been a disappointing few games for Pipita and his performance last night was summed up in his clumsy and lazy lunging tackle on a Guangzhou player that would have earned him an automatic red had they not been playing a friendly. It was sad to see him this way on a game where he wore the captain’s armband.

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Ozil

I get it now: the 2 dots on top of the letter ‘O’ on his name symbolize his eyes. What vision – is it really because of those googly eyes (maybe he has better peripheral vision because of them)?. People compare him to Guti because of this (not the eyes, the vision). But Guti doesn’t have his pace and mobility. He doesn’t have Guti’s petulance either. And at age 23, he’s already way better than Guti. I am so going to get me an Ozil jersey this season.

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Kaka

When I start wearing my Ozil shirt around, I’ll stop wearing my Kaka one. What’s happened to him? Did I jinx him when I praised his performance after the Galaxy game? He will have a preseason this time around and will have no ‘lack of fitness’ excuses to hide behind. If he ‘fails’ yet again, then I will hope to see a battle-tested Sergio Canales and/or Pablo Sarabia wearing Real Madrid’s ‘8’ next season as our second-choice fantasista.

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Vanilla Joe

For those who are too young to understand the Vanilla Ice reference, check out his one hit in the you tube video above and discover the inspiration behind his hairdo . When news broke that Callejon would be joining us this season, everyone thought he was coming back as transfer fodder… or as a replacement to our 10m Euro Ball Boy Pedro Leon. His role during these preseason games suggests that he will be more than a mannequin wearing Real Madrid’s #21 on the squad list. His performances also seem to hint that he won’t be the subject of another tirade from Mourinho that will include references to Zidane. Quick, direct and refreshingly effective: he seems like a legitimate substitute for Di Maria.

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Di Maria

I thought I had read a Mourinho interview revealing that he’s just gotten married but is spending his honeymoon in China with his teammates. I guess we all saw for ourselves how much pent up energy he had inside of him when he came in at 60’: we were supposed to see the game die down gradually until he put on his please-don’t-bench-me-Mou performance. El Fideo (The Noodle) as he’s called, showed his full array of attacking capability in the land of Rice and Noodles: leaving his defenders as a heap of twisted limbs as he scored a goal by pulling off the footbaling-equivalent of a basketball pump fake. This was of course after assisting Jesse with a cross that would have qualified him for ‘So You Think You Can Dance’. Jesse of course, just had to respond in kind by scoring with his shoulder.

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Oh what fun it was! Last night was the stuff of child-like football fairytales. There will be another one on Saturday to look forward to as well. After that, we’re off to war in the SuperCopa: no more fairytales, just epics.

2011-07-30: Leicester City 1 - Real Madrid 2

2011-07-27: Hertha Berlin 1 - Real Madrid 3

2011 US Tour Videos (vs. Chivas Guadalajara and Philadelphia Union)

The Ex-Galacticos vs. The Galaxy (Part 1): Jersey Numbers and then Some…

Ah here they are again at last: Real Madrid matches. Nevermind that they’re only friendlies. For die-hard Madridistas like myself, there are never enough of them… and though fatherhood has helped a lot with the Real Madrid withdrawal symptoms, they never go away permanently. Last Sunday morning (Saturday evening LA time I think), Real Madrid played their first pre-season match against the LA Galaxy who were in the middle of their season.

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My Little Madridsita

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The boys in white had ridiculous tans. I blame either the California sun for this or Cristiano Ronaldo’s metrosexual-tendencies-on-steroids becoming a pervading influence on the entire team (they were in Hollywood after all). As this will be my first post in a long time, forgive the rust. It didn’t help of course that the game coincided with my ‘shift’ to take care of my nearly 2-month old little Madridista during the time the game was showing online (I HATE the Singapore Cable TV networks’ coverage of this football preseason thus far). And since there was no Ronaldo, Ozil, Benzema or Xabi Alonso on show in the first half, he wasn’t too keen on watching (I had to carry him, walking about a few rounds around the apartment to keep him from getting bored – resulting in me missing out on patches of on-the-pitch action).

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I’ve got a couple of thoughts on the tactics used for the match which I’ll post sometime this week. Some of these thoughts of course will overlap with my thoughts on individual players and their respective performances. Anyway, here goes:

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Pre-season Jersey Numbers aren’t usually the ‘final’ rubber-stamped jersey numbers for the season but they’re a pretty good indication on what will be rubber stamped on the backs of the players’ jerseys come the season. Someone at RMFB was asking why there were no names on the jerseys… well, this is because it’s somewhat ‘protocol’ for friendlies. Either way, let’s go through some notable performances from the boys yesterday:

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6 – Sami Khedira. So Sami’s finally taken the ‘6’, left out by Diarra and Adebayor. One would have thought this’d be a good number for Lass too, but being that he’s waiting for someone to pay 18m Euros for him in Madrid, Sami then took the number and looked good in it – it was as I remember also his number for the German National team.

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7 – Cristiano Ronaldo. Cristiano Ronaldo is as close to Hollywood as you would get to a European Footballer (Becks after all is ALREADY in Hollywood). The fans went nuts when they saw him get up to warm up and totally went bonkers when a moment that got me yelling ‘Pass it you F%cking ball hog!’ ended with a ‘Bloody F#ck. What a Goal!’. As the fans and Ronaldo’s teammates went nuts, for me, it ended with ‘Can you please watch your mouth when you’re with the baby!’ from the wife.

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8 – Kaka. He looked fit, he looked lively, he asked for the ball, he took defenders on (and almost had them fall on their own ankles, backpedalling to keep up) and created some fabulous goalscoring opportunities (including the opening goal). Mourinho spoke about wanting to get the old Kaka back – maybe he wasn’t just talking out of his ass when he said that.

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10 – Ozil. Boy did our google-eyed Martian playmaker look a nice fit for the ‘10’ (I’ve got him wearing it on my PSP already hahaha). With Man-Ci-Ni of Man-Ci-Ty expressing his desire for Aguero as a replacement to Argentine-Copa-America-Sacrificial-Lamb Tevez, perhaps Ozil’s comment that the ’10’ is waiting for Aguero won’t come true. His neat interplaying with Ronaldo in the second half was a nice sight to see again and one that befits a fantasista wearing Real Madrid’s ‘10’.

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11 – Granero. ‘Barn’ or ‘Grain Dealer’ (Google Translate’s names for him) played in the ‘Alonso role’ at the heart of the midfield alongside Khedira. Maybe it’s because we were playing an MLS side on ‘friendly mode’… or maybe he just had a really good game. Maybe not. Maybe he’s just really that good and for the first time in a long time, we saw the Granero that we all wanted to see: kept the passing patterns of the team well-oiled and logical (i.e. no mindless passing over and over back to the defense ala Lady Gago). He even got everyone to piss off the ball because he wanted to take the Free Kick late in the first half.

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15 – Fabio Coentrao. Coentrao took the ‘15’ which Drenthe will hopefully never wear again. It’s interesting to compare the current and former ‘15’ of Real Madrid. The former (Drenthe) came to Madrid as a PROSPECT at the cost of 14m supposedly as some sort of athletic phenomenon whose position on the pitch we never quite knew at that time. We pretty much ‘settled’ it as him being either a Left Back or a Left-Sided midfielder: he is still neither. Seriously, if Real Madrid can’t find a club who will take him (or whom he will take), perhaps we can find a Reggae band or a Hip Hop Group who will?

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The current 15 (Coentrao) on the other hand, has come as a ridiculously over-priced player (30m including Garay) for a supposedly a position we’re already covered nicely for: Left Back. On the back of yesterday’s performance however, it’s clear that he’s more than that. Playing the first half as part of the 3-man attack between the lone-striker and the double pivot, he interchanged positions constantly with Callejon and Kaka creating absolute mayhem in the LA midfield and defense. In the second half, he played as a ‘pivot’ alongside Xabi Alonso too, but occasionally making ‘raids’ forward that continued to befuddle the Galaxy. He was as comfortable in those multiple roles as a surfer dude with his bleach-blonde hairdo in California.

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30m for a Left Back is indeed too much. 30m for a Left Back / Left-or-Right-Winger / Attacking Midfielder / Central Midfielder… now that’s a thought. Looking back to Royston Drenthe, the prospect whose athleticism and physical gifts many marveled at some years back, perhaps this was what was envisioned of him. On the back of yesterday’s performance, Fabio Coentrao fulfilled the role that many perhaps hoped Drenthe would fill: an amazingly fit, all-action player who could play almost everywhere: a true Mourinho player.

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Just a thought: Coentrao is the 2nd Benfica player in consecutive seasons whom we signed and had many balking at the price. Last year it was Di Maria: he’s not so overpriced at 25m Euros now. And to put things perhaps further into context (or maybe out of it): in the AXL (Almighty Xenophobe League), Liverpool signed 27-year old Stewart Downing for 20 GBP (23m Euros), they truly believe wholeheartedly that with this super critical signing, they can make FIFTH place in the AXL.

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19 – Raphael Varane. Just as Coentrao seems to be the man to accomplish the unfulfilled role envisioned for Drenthe, Varane seems to be the man envisioned to do the same for Garay: that of a ‘trainee’ centerback who can one day grow into grand-daddy Carvalho’s boots. Varane and Garay make for a very interesting comparison. It wasn’t too long ago where we found a Racing Santander starlet who looked like having the goods to play for a us… and Barca supposedly wanted him too! (No, I’m not talking about Sergio Canales YET) A Centerback, who might be able to play DM too who took nasty free kicks and was also a penalty specialist (even scoring 2 daggers against us). We bought him for 10m (same price as Canales). We loaned him out for one year to Racing to let him keep getting first team experience (like we plan to now with Canales) and when he finally joins us, we realize that perhaps he’s not Real Madrid-Starting XI-calibre after all.

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Here’s the difference: Garay, now at a point wherein we know he’s never going to be a first choice Centerback for Real Madrid after all those years of him being a ‘prospect’ is now 24. If Garay was truly going to be good enough to be a starting XI player for Real Madrid, we’d have known by now – especially during the Pellegrini season where he played alongside Albiol. He never gave me that ‘Ah…yes… he’s a Real Madrid player’ moment during the times he played (I remember feeling that way about Pepe once I saw him play fully fit). As of now, there are 2 players who are of this ‘tenure track’ at Madrid: the 20-year-old Canales and Varane at 18 years of age. Both at around 10million each: we will find out if they will either become the Spanish Ozil or French Pique or if they will turn out to be the Spanish Gago or the French Garay.

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Over the last few years, Madrid spent money on a series of promising youth prospects: 13m for Higuain, 6m for Marcelo, 20m for Gago, 10m for Garay and 14m for Drenthe. That’s 63m Euros. Today, I value Higuain at 35m, Marcelo at 25m, Gago for 8, Garay for 8, Drenthe for 3 = 79m (a difference of +16m). On the same principle, even if only one of Canales and Varane turn out to fulfill their perceived potential, we stand to gain a ‘profit’. If both live true to their perceived potential over the next couple of years, then we can let Carvalho and even Kaka to retire in grace.

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So is Callejon our new Pop-star in the team post-Lady Gago? What should we call him? JoeCal? Vanilla Merengue?

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21 – Jose Callejon. He took Pedro Leon’s ‘21’. Hmmm… #21 playing on the flanks for Madrid: anyone remember the well-loved and classy Santi Solari? He was no Galactico but played more than competently alongside them as starter and sub for many years. Here’s to hoping Callejon (or ‘Alley’ or ‘Lane’ as Google Translate likes to call him) doing the same without having to get shafted out of the club by a mindless Galactico policy like Santi did.

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Suggestion to the Marketing Executives of the club: First, get a SUPER lucrative endorsement deal with a hairgel company: can you imagine the pile of cash the club stands to earn with CRon and JoeCal endorsing those? Next idea: manufacture and sell Callejon-hairstyle wigs at the club shop: you guys will make a killing.

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29 – Joselu. Unlike some of my co-RMFB writers, I’m not a diehard cantera fan. I embrace the fact that Real Madrid is not just the club of Madrid or Spain, but it is the club of the World. On that basis, I am a believer that only the absolute best players that can be put together to form a TEAM are to play with for my beloved Merengues. Thus, I’m not naïve enough to believe that the best 25 players of the world can be put together and be called a Real Madrid squad. I believe in a realistic balance of players to assemble the best team.

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Here’s where my opinion on the Cantera come in: IF there are cantera players that are truly good enough to play for Real Madrid’s first team, then they should. Canteranos in my humble opinion are to play for Real Madrid if they are deemed good enough, not because they are canteranos. On that basis, I mourn the fact that the managements of the past were too stupid to recognize the talents of world-class canteranos who were once amongst us (I speak of Etoo, Cambiasso, Borja Valero and Mata among others)… or enact strategies that would have allowed us to hold on to them for long enough us to hold onto them till they reached their true level.

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The return of Callejon (supposedly at the request of Mourinho) and the presence of the likes of Arbeloa and Granero, both Canternos deemed important to the squad though not necessarily as starters is a return to the cantera direction that I favor. I would imagine though that Etoo and perhaps Borja or even Cambiasso would be good enough to start even in this Real Madrid. It is on this basis that I believe that the 3rd striker of Real Madrid should be a Canterano.

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When a youngster like Joselu would have the audacity to pull a Robinho-esque maneuver on David Beckham (run on the left flank and then turn to the right to shoot between his legs) and succeed, it tells you that there are resources there that we may not necessarily be tapping fully into. If Mourinho wants a real #9 Target Man, I’d rather we let Alvaro Morata be that guy even if we can manage to land Adebayor on the cheap with a paycut.

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More thoughts on yesterday's game on Part 2. Thoughts on Tactics up next...