# Real Madrid 5-1 Real Betis Postgame Reaction

An episode of [The Real Deal: A Real Madrid Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1807821669), 4 Jan 2026, 32 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/103607aa8/podcast/play/113485488/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-0-4%2F415470040-44100-2-d83240657599a.mp3

Jarod Hector reacts to Real Madrid's first game of the 2026 calendar year.

## Transcript

[0:00] Hello and welcome to The Real Deal, a Real Madrid podcast with
[0:05] me, Jerrod Hector. I'm going solo today.
[0:09] Real Madrid had their first win of the 2026 calendar year 51
[0:17] over Real Batiste. And you know, we're going to get
[0:21] into Gonzalez Garcia and his wonderful game and, and all the
[0:25] things. But First off, everybody, happy
[0:27] New year to you. I hope you enjoyed the holiday
[0:31] season. If you celebrate, hope you
[0:35] enjoyed some time off. Hope you enjoyed touching grass
[0:38] as the kids say, do the kids still say touching grass?
[0:41] Just hope you had some time away and just some time to to just
[0:44] relax and reset and just enjoy yourself and as always, thank
[0:48] you for tuning in here. Please like the video subscribe,
[0:53] comment or read them in the chat.
[0:54] Shout out to the Miriam. I see you already.
[0:55] You want your flowers. Hold on, we'll get there and I
[0:59] want you to also share this with a friend, people who are Real
[1:02] Madrid fans out there and as always, if you want the audio
[1:05] version of this, it will be up on Apple and Spotify later on.
[1:09] So Real Madrid a 51V over Batiste in a match that was I
[1:16] would say for the majority of it comfortable, right, with the
[1:21] exception of about 10 or so minutes in the first half and
[1:26] then about 11:50 minutes of the second-half, right where the the
[1:32] team just switched off. But we will get into all that
[1:36] first. I want to go with the line UPS
[1:38] where we started the match today.
[1:40] So Cortois of course in gold of Alberta, Ascencio, Rudiger,
[1:43] Carreras, Chuomeni, Cama, Venga, Bellingham, Benicius, Gonzalo
[1:47] and Rodrigo. And you know, one of the things
[1:51] that is so interesting about this club is when in Boppe the
[1:55] injury was revealed, everybody's like, you know, in Boppe scores
[1:58] 5550% of our goals. Where is the goal scoring going
[2:01] to come from, right? Because he was the only one that
[2:03] was converting chances. By the way, the team as a whole
[2:05] still poor at chance conversion, right?
[2:08] Like, even when we're on that street to start the season and
[2:10] we want on 13 out of 14 and we were leading top five leagues in
[2:14] Europe in shots in the final third passes into the final
[2:17] third, all that. But we're not converting, right?
[2:20] We just, we just weren't. And we're still not overall.
[2:23] So the question was, Oh my God. And Bobby's out.
[2:25] Who the hell is going to score all our goals today?
[2:27] Turns out Gonzalo Garcia is back from the dead and not dead,
[2:32] really just sort of a lack of playing time.
[2:33] And you know, look, when Mbapi is in the form and playing the
[2:37] way that he is, it is difficult to, if not impossible to
[2:42] substitute him and not play him and play Gonzalo Garcia instead.
[2:45] It's just not something you can you can do.
[2:48] However, what was so interesting about seeing Gonzalo Garcia, and
[2:53] I want to be very clear about this, in no way am I saying
[2:57] Gonzalo Garcia is a better player than killing Mbappe.
[3:00] No, nobody would say that. It's not a thing.
[3:02] OK. However, there is a way in which
[3:05] he plays that number 9 position that is different than the way
[3:10] Killian Mbappe plays that number 9 position.
[3:13] OK, Killian Mbappe very much sort of a volume shot creator,
[3:18] shot generator and scorer, right?
[3:20] Like because he's just is otherworldly in his abilities.
[3:25] Gonzalo much more of a, for lack of a better word, traditional 9
[3:31] in that he makes certain kinds of runs.
[3:34] He links up play, right? Almost as though he was coached
[3:38] and trained and developed to play a traditional 9 role his
[3:41] whole life, which, oh shit, by the way, he was right.
[3:44] So he just plays it differently. What does that mean?
[3:47] It means that he's not going to occupy the same areas of the
[3:51] pitch as Vinicius sometimes or as Rodrigo sometimes because
[3:55] he's not, that's not who he is, right?
[3:57] He's he doesn't play that way, right?
[3:59] He knows how to link up. He knows how to put this back to
[4:00] goal, right? He just has been developed in a
[4:02] different way. Again, I'm not saying he's
[4:04] better. He's just different.
[4:06] And when you have Vinicius and Rodrigo on the pitch with him,
[4:10] they will have a little more freedom and space because
[4:12] there's not going to be too much jumbled up situations going on
[4:15] where everyone wanting to gravitate to the same side,
[4:18] right? And he will make runs because,
[4:21] and again, we talked about this on our last show or the show
[4:24] before last, where I think we're all upset that or yes, upset
[4:29] that. And Bobby was clearly playing
[4:30] for that end of year record and he was literally doing
[4:33] everything he could for him to score.
[4:36] When Gonzalo moves or make runs, it isn't always necessarily for
[4:40] him to get the ball in for him to score.
[4:43] He's doing that to open things up for the squad up front,
[4:46] right? And that makes synergy much more
[4:49] easy and palatable up front, right?
[4:51] And that's why you saw a lot of sort of creation and link up
[4:55] play up front. Now, as a whole, we still didn't
[4:58] capitalize on nearly as many chances as we should have.
[5:01] However, again, 51 excellent, Excellent match, excellent,
[5:06] excellent scoreline. So I want to talk about Rodrigo
[5:10] briefly because he had two assists, if I'm not mistaken,
[5:12] offset pieces, just beautiful balls into the box.
[5:16] And I do want to give Benny credit because he was the drawer
[5:20] of that free kick that led to that first goal.
[5:23] Just a ton of activity and purpose in his dribbles to start
[5:27] the game, really going after their right back and really
[5:31] pushing, pushing Batiste there right.
[5:33] And so we get the free kick from Rodrigo just outside the box and
[5:36] he beautifully gets that ball in to Gonzalo who just moves and
[5:44] adjusts his body and gets behind the defender who's got his back
[5:48] turned the other way for a clean header for that one.
[5:51] Nothing right goes right across the face of goal and it and it
[5:54] was beautiful. Again, not the highest leap in
[5:56] the world, not not Ronaldo or Bale esque in it's height, but
[6:01] again, just in his ability to understand.
[6:03] OK, if I do a cut in left stop, cut back right, right and just
[6:08] cause the defender again, anytime you do these kind of
[6:10] subtle moves or motions, right, all you're doing is causing the
[6:13] defender to have to think and make motions right and then have
[6:17] the double guess wait, where did he go?
[6:19] Did he go that way? Did he go this way?
[6:20] Right. These these various moves to
[6:22] create options for your team to score.
[6:24] And the ball came in and because the defender was in La La land
[6:28] the the beautiful ball in front of Rodrigo was uncontested.
[6:31] So Gonzalo had an easy head in tap to go up 1.
[6:35] Nothing there. And I thought, wow, like this is
[6:39] the kind of thing we want to see, like just beautiful,
[6:42] beautiful, beautiful play. All right, so for that first
[6:47] half, we were controlling possession.
[6:50] We were really kind of in the swing of things as as Real
[6:53] Madrid want to do, but also as the club is want to do.
[6:56] You know, the last 10-12 minutes, we kind of just shut
[7:00] off. All right, guys, stop running as
[7:02] much, stop tracking. And Valverde said it.
[7:04] We were very good in the 1st 30 minutes.
[7:06] We pressed hard, we played well, we created chances.
[7:08] But in those last 10 minutes of the first half, we relaxed a
[7:11] little. I'd say you relaxed a lot,
[7:13] right? It just, and this is a habit and
[7:16] a concerning habit that this team has in so far as they go up
[7:20] one, they figure, all right, job done, we're just going to shut
[7:23] off now and chill out. And against elite opposition,
[7:28] that's how you get let them back in the game, right?
[7:32] And lucky for us, Betty's were not able to get back into the
[7:36] game. But you know, this is a better
[7:38] side, especially in that if Betty's was playing in that
[7:41] first half, the last 10 minutes, how they were in that
[7:44] second-half when they were really looking to get that
[7:46] equalizer when they were down to one, it could have been 11 going
[7:49] into the half. And actually it almost was right
[7:50] if not for a Valverde intervention late in in that
[7:55] first half, right. So we're going to halftime Rob 1
[7:58] nothing again, I thought 1st 30 minutes.
[8:01] Well, Bellingham great in the middle, Kamabinka providing so
[8:04] much for us. Chewa, chewa many.
[8:07] You know, one of the things that Sid talks about often is when we
[8:11] have our our defensive midfielder and Chewa many and
[8:14] sometimes his inability to move off the ball in one path.
[8:18] It's like double touch, right? It's like touch, touch, touch
[8:21] before he makes the pass. I feel like once a match now
[8:24] there is a play where he receives the ball and the play
[8:27] is because it's a give go, right, A quick one touch right
[8:31] back to the player who just gave it to you.
[8:32] And for whatever reason, he just can't execute it.
[8:35] And there's one of those today. Again, didn't cost the team, so
[8:39] not a big deal. But you know, again, against
[8:41] elite opposition, these are the little things, right, that that
[8:45] hurt. And when you're going up
[8:47] against, because all the best teams in the world have talent,
[8:49] right? Real Madrid isn't doesn't have
[8:50] the market locked on elite talent.
[8:53] But when you are trying to win the biggest trophies and win the
[8:57] biggest competitions, it's about fine, razor thin margins, right?
[9:00] And that inability to do those kinds of things hurts you
[9:03] against the elite opposition. All right, so we go into the
[9:07] half one NIL again, finished 1/2 poorly.
[9:11] So that's that's a bit concerning for us, right?
[9:13] Again, a habit that this team has a little bit too too too
[9:17] much of. I will say also on on on Gonzalo
[9:22] Garcia, he again his ability to play off of and have the other
[9:29] other wingers in Vinnie and Rodrigo play off of him.
[9:32] It's just so vital because of again, the space he he generates
[9:36] by his runs, his well timed runs where he moves when we have the
[9:41] ball in possession, it dragging defenders away, clearing up an
[9:45] opening space for his teammates. Again, it's not that he is
[9:48] better than killing an Mbappe, just that he has an
[9:50] understanding of that position that is just different than
[9:53] Mbappe does right again, and Bobby was working right 13 to
[9:57] the 1st 14 is over the 1st 13 when he's scoring all the goals
[10:00] that was working OK. This is just another way where
[10:04] oh looks a little bit better and everybody can kind of play off
[10:07] of it pretty well. All right, so we go into the
[10:10] second-half, we're we're up one nil.
[10:13] You know, Betty's kind of coming out of the the the gate started
[10:17] pressing a little bit right. There was some turnovers and
[10:19] again, this team still struggles with when there is any kind of
[10:23] pressure, we don't know what to do, right?
[10:27] The, the, the ball gets turned over easier, right?
[10:29] And what I saw in this match was too much still of that balance
[10:33] between or that, that no man's land between freedom and
[10:39] structure. And to me it is still unsettled.
[10:43] It is not in its right balance and equilibrium yet.
[10:47] The reason why Chap Alonzo was brought here is to create
[10:49] structure and discipline for this team and then within that
[10:52] structure you then give license and freedom.
[10:56] To me, the structure has still not foundational enough yet for
[11:00] the players to have the freedom within it, as we saw in that
[11:04] second-half. So we're up one nil and we we
[11:08] lose, you know, Batista's pressing turn the ball over a
[11:11] bit, but still nothing major happens.
[11:13] Now on the second call, a beautiful ball in from, I want
[11:19] to say come a Venga streaking down the right to Gonzalo, who
[11:23] controls the ball with his chest and with one motion off his
[11:28] chest, volleys took his right leg into the bottom right hand
[11:32] corner of the net. A beautiful, beautiful display
[11:38] of skill and ability. I'm sure some, you know, and
[11:41] Papi's also skillful, could do something similar, right?
[11:44] But just a beautiful, beautiful play.
[11:47] And so that point we're up to nil and you would think, all
[11:49] right, two nil to Betty's as Real Madrid, this is the kind of
[11:54] match you should be able to see out relatively easy with no
[11:58] issues. But as we all know, that was not
[12:01] the case. Real Madrid switches off yet
[12:04] again and belt Valverde spoke about the switch off again.
[12:08] He said. Then in the second-half, we
[12:09] relaxed way too much because we were winning and they started
[12:13] creating a lot of chances. We need to work on that for
[12:16] sure. You know, at some point it's got
[12:19] to, we got to stop doing the whole, we know we do this, we
[12:23] need to work on it. Well, if you know, this is what
[12:25] you do, yet you keep doing it, something is wrong somewhere,
[12:28] right? There's a problem.
[12:30] And again, this is where I go back to because the foundational
[12:34] structure that shabby Alonso wants to implement is not
[12:37] ingrained yet. This is what happens.
[12:39] If it was, the team would know what to do, right?
[12:43] OK, we're up to nil. Let's control and see this game
[12:46] out right? You could have had substitutions
[12:48] earlier. You can do a lot of things
[12:49] earlier, but Betty starts pressing to get that to get a
[12:52] goal back and all of a sudden turnovers, guys aren't tracking
[12:55] back. Everybody's too far apart from
[12:57] each other, right? This is what happens, right?
[13:01] And I agree with the Miriam said I need actions, not words from
[13:03] from them on that part. It's not a technical problem.
[13:05] It's a mental problem. I would say it's both in that
[13:09] the technical problem is they have not bought into what chubby
[13:13] wants because their mentality is I'm just going we're going to
[13:17] switch off right. It's laissez faire.
[13:19] We're just going to we're in control to nothing.
[13:21] We got it. Nothing to worry about here,
[13:23] right. I I I this is a problem for this
[13:26] squad and again had bet he's been a better side when it got
[13:30] to two one. And by the way, Raquel may that
[13:33] shot that hit the with the woodwork.
[13:35] Let's be honest, if it's 22 at that point, tell me you all
[13:38] don't see this game going vastly different than it did, right?
[13:43] So here we are, two, two or two one.
[13:46] Excuse me. And you know the Burnabout crowd
[13:49] getting nervous as rightfully so, because it could have easily
[13:52] been 2-2. And this is a squad that we know
[13:56] if and when adversity hits, they generally do not respond to it
[14:02] well, right? We've seen it this season.
[14:05] They just don't respond to adversity well.
[14:07] All right, so it's 21 when we get up for the third goal,
[14:11] another set piece, a corner, another ball in from Rodrigo
[14:16] beautifully to Ascencio. Who was they were Zola marking.
[14:20] I believe Rial Betty's was and and Ascencio had that clear
[14:23] header shot. So we got 3-1 and then at that
[14:25] point you're like all right, we can relax a little bit.
[14:28] But still to that end, Betty still had some chances.
[14:31] I want to say the XG is out yet. Want to see if stats bots got
[14:35] it, because right now I'm looking at sofa score and sofa
[14:37] score. It's not that I don't like sofa
[14:39] score, it's fine, but I think marks that spot is a little
[14:43] better. That one's not up yet.
[14:44] All right, we'll go with sofa score.
[14:46] So if we're looking at the XG. 2.91 from Madrid to .98 for
[14:51] Betty's. Real Madrid created 5 big
[14:53] chances, one for Betty's nineteen shots.
[14:56] Real Madrid 3 for 13 for Betty's 4 saves apiece.
[15:01] They dominate on corner kicks, 85 and obviously possession, 61%
[15:07] for US, 39% for them. Once that third goal came in, we
[15:11] went up 31. It kind of took the air out of
[15:13] them a little bit and you can still to see Madrid starting to
[15:18] to express itself more. But once that game was in the
[15:21] balance and there was that up and down sort of action going on
[15:24] again, that's when the squad was stretched thin, right?
[15:27] There was not tracking back And you can see it the defensive
[15:30] line, they were cutting their hands up, yelling at the
[15:32] attackers to Yo, you guys are not tracking back, right.
[15:34] We're we're we're giving up opportunities here.
[15:36] If not for these incredible interventions.
[15:38] Couple Tebow saves were big right to to to stop us from from
[15:42] from giving up another conceding a second goal.
[15:44] So again, against better teams and we'll get to athletic
[15:49] towards the end here. This is going to be a problem,
[15:51] right. So that switch off mentality and
[15:54] it's a mental thing. This part it's mental.
[15:57] It's 90 minutes plus stoppage time, man, you turn off when the
[16:00] final whistles blow. That's when it's over and this
[16:02] team for and it's habit now, right?
[16:04] It is ingrained when you constantly do the same thing
[16:07] over and over. It isn't like, oh, this is a one
[16:10] off. This is who they are and what
[16:11] they do. So they need to be better about
[16:14] that. Last I I actually noted here in
[16:17] in my in my notes, switching off at the 63rd minute mark
[16:20] disjointed out of possession and they were closing the game
[16:23] looking bad there and looking bad.
[16:25] Gulair, Rodrigo and Massen Gulair for Rodrigo and Massen
[16:28] Juano for Vinny in a 76 minute. And then when those guys came on
[16:36] you saw again. Now we get the the the hat trick
[16:41] the the the goal from the third, the third goal to make it 4 from
[16:45] Gonzalo. So first we have a ball from
[16:48] Rudiger of all people. But what was even better, Guler
[16:52] timed his run really well and and so Rudiger delivered a great
[16:56] ball to to Guler. Guler timed his run well.
[17:01] Guler gets the pass to Gonzalo who back heels it with his left
[17:06] foot. Now I want to be clear part of
[17:08] the reason with that also why he had so much space Gonzalo for
[17:11] that cheeky back heel left foot was his movements before.
[17:15] If you go back and watch the goal, look at him moving before
[17:18] he gets the pass in from from from Arta beautiful back heel.
[17:23] And then once it get once it got to four one, you know that was
[17:26] it, right? Betty's knew we're not scoring
[17:28] three goals here in the second-half to tie this up.
[17:30] And then again the fifth goal we get a beautiful cross in from
[17:34] Valverde and Garcia. Another Fran Garcia, not Gonzalo
[17:38] this time, beautiful right off the bouncers, by the way, while
[17:41] he was charging and it's not an easy finish by Fran Garcia.
[17:44] Ball literally bounced as he's sprinting in right in front of
[17:47] him. He leaps and gets the ball in
[17:50] off the side of his right foot impasse the goalie for the fifth
[17:53] goal to then put the game away. I mean, the game's like put away
[17:55] at at 43141 to go away at 51. So overall a beautiful and by
[18:01] the way, at at the end there you put on Fran and Mendy in for
[18:06] Gonzalo Garcia and Rudiger and Gonzalo had a beautiful in the
[18:09] 80th minute, beautiful standing ovation from the crowd because
[18:12] he played so, so well. 51. So the final score line looked
[18:19] great. But you saw and good point here,
[18:24] all the goals scored by La Fabrica players, which is
[18:27] beautiful for us, right? Like we always talk about, you
[18:30] know, what about our guys from the internal internal.
[18:32] I think this Gonzalo Garcia performance also showed and
[18:35] again, this is where Chavi Alonso has to assert control as
[18:39] a manager. Obviously, I'm not saying you
[18:42] start him over in Boppe when fully fit in the biggest matches
[18:45] of the season. That's what I'm not saying.
[18:47] However, you know, in a Copa del Rey match against the Segunda B
[18:51] team, that's a match where you start Gonzalo Garcia and not
[18:55] killing in Boppe, right? Like to me, right, it's
[18:59] Gonzalo's make made a clear case today for why he should get way
[19:03] more minutes than he's getting right now.
[19:06] So 51, we get those, we get those three points to bring the
[19:11] gap back to four after Barcelona's win yesterday.
[19:14] And look again, you saw when this team plays well, who it can
[19:20] be and what they can do. But again, you also see when
[19:25] this team does what they do, which is turn off, right, how
[19:30] they're susceptible. And again, this is against
[19:32] Betis, who look, Betis is a good club.
[19:35] They're fourth in the division right now, 4th or 5th, a good a
[19:39] good squad. However, against a better team
[19:43] in the Champions League against Barcelona, against Athleti, this
[19:48] is not going to work, right? That turning off is how you give
[19:50] up two or three goals quick and now you're down, right?
[19:53] And so going into Thursday's match in the Super Copa against
[19:58] Athleti, and we know this. Athlete is going to play
[20:03] aggressive and balls to the wall from the first whistle to the
[20:06] final whistle. There will be 0 let up from them
[20:09] in this match. Not all, none whatsoever.
[20:13] So if Madrid thinks they can do what they did today, were they?
[20:16] We were good for 30 minutes, went up.
[20:18] What? Nope, that's what we have.
[20:20] What we see will happen. There is a repeat of what
[20:22] happened at the Metropolitano earlier this year, right?
[20:25] And it was, I mean, that was one of our terrible losses of the
[20:32] season, if not our worst, right? This is how this team has to
[20:37] play is on full cylinders at all times, hyper vigilant, hyper
[20:42] aware and playing together with synergy and connection.
[20:46] You saw it, right? It was a beautiful right, people
[20:49] doing things in service of the team and not themselves
[20:53] individually. We talked about this ambition is
[20:55] a wonderful thing. As a matter of fact, you cannot
[20:57] be a professional player if you don't have ambition.
[21:00] It's impossible. You won't make it.
[21:03] But your ambition cannot bleed over into agenda, which then
[21:06] becomes just about you and not about the collective right.
[21:09] It's about we, the team has to win.
[21:12] We have to get to to the next level.
[21:14] We have to win the Super Cup, we have to win the league, we have
[21:17] to win Champions League. Not me.
[21:18] I have to score goals and do whatever.
[21:21] I said this in my in our New Year's Eve episode.
[21:22] If you saw it, the, the resolution I had for the team,
[21:25] one of them was less me and more we, right.
[21:28] And it's funny because nothing you could say, and this is not
[21:32] about Mbappe. This is just strictly about how
[21:36] Gonzalo played when you watched him today.
[21:40] Nothing about anything he was doing was in service of himself.
[21:45] But it so happened that he gets the hat trick, right?
[21:49] That's how it works, right? Like you, you play within
[21:53] service of the squad and good things happen.
[22:00] I thought again, Rodrigo excellent today.
[22:04] I thought Vinnie, especially in the first half was very, very
[22:07] good. Jude Bellingham as usual, I
[22:09] thought was excellent. Hamakema Venka provide us so
[22:11] much in the midfield. Just their ability to counter
[22:14] press and win balls back. It's it's beautiful.
[22:19] And their ability to their ability to escape pressure right
[22:21] and be press resistant. We talk about our lack of press
[22:24] resistance on this. Wow.
[22:25] We don't have a whole lot of guys who are press resistant.
[22:28] You know, we're going to be getting some guys back for
[22:30] injury. I believe the last thing I saw
[22:32] was Carvajal might be available for super Copa.
[22:38] You know, if he does. That's an interesting question
[22:40] guys. What do you think do you put?
[22:44] I mean, that's that will be his first match back.
[22:47] I don't know that you put him back at right back when Valverde
[22:49] is playing well there. And look, I know Fetty doesn't
[22:52] like playing right back, but guess what?
[22:54] He's really good at right back. Like, I'm sorry, Fetty, I know
[22:57] you hate that position, but you're just much better there.
[22:59] Like I, you're the game is simplified for you there, right?
[23:03] You're you play as a wing back, right?
[23:05] You know what you have to do coming up and down the pitch.
[23:08] It's beautiful. And so for me, if I'm looking at
[23:11] this, I totally see it as a way in which Valverde stays at right
[23:17] back. And maybe depending on how the
[23:18] game's going, you get, you get, you get Carvajal in there.
[23:26] He's never said he hates it. That's not what I've heard.
[23:31] I've heard that he is not a fan. I think the comments in the
[23:36] Miriam were that I'm trained as a midfielder, that's why I know
[23:40] how to play. I did not train as a right back.
[23:42] That to me suggest that he doesn't like playing it.
[23:44] Maybe he hates a strong word, but if he if he had his choice,
[23:48] his preference is to play midfield over right back and not
[23:52] right back. And I get that right.
[23:55] You've been, you've been to midfielder your whole life.
[23:56] That's what you're that's what you've been trained as.
[23:59] But I think that in this case, right back for the time being
[24:04] while Carville Hall and Trent are injured, I think this is the
[24:08] best place for him. So what was like Kevin Vega,
[24:13] June again played well. I mentioned Frank, Frank Garcia
[24:17] coming off the bench playing, scoring that that late goal.
[24:20] Beautiful, beautiful stuff by the squad.
[24:22] We're going to look at some comments here in the chat.
[24:29] What do we have? Belleham and Kema Vinga and Fede
[24:31] are all box to box. Yeah, we know that, which which
[24:35] is the beautiful thing. We like box to box midfielders,
[24:37] right? I think again, one of the big
[24:40] things with this squad is, is our ability to be versatile,
[24:45] right, and play, play different styles.
[24:49] And Kema Vinga is such a key to this squad in that.
[24:52] And when he is healthy, we're so good.
[24:54] You guys know that I call those guys are Monstars, Jude
[24:58] Chuomeni, Kema Vinga and Valverde when all four are on
[25:02] the pitch and when particularly when he's over at right back.
[25:07] I think that they provide so much dynamism and athletics,
[25:13] athleticism and size again, in that midfield.
[25:17] I I think it's huge. They're not the quite the, the,
[25:22] the, the profiles that we might want, right?
[25:25] Although I think we've been seeing over the last couple,
[25:29] couple matches we've been seeing that Bellingham can drop into
[25:33] that 8 roll, right and be a bit of a controller, right?
[25:36] We saw it particularly in in our last match before the before the
[25:40] holiday break. So look, we have a bunch of
[25:44] versatile guys on this team. Unfortunately, injuries have
[25:48] forced us to play them in positions that maybe they're not
[25:52] best suited to or their skill set isn't fully developed in
[25:55] those situations. Because again, remember, these
[25:57] guys are all pretty young, right?
[25:59] The oldest of those midfielders is Valverde, who's 26 or 27,
[26:05] right? I mean, everybody else is
[26:08] 24/23/22, right? Like, which means to me they can
[26:13] get better, I think, right? There are ways in which they can
[26:15] improve and get better. Can they develop other skills?
[26:20] You know, this is what well, I would say this is what the
[26:22] offseason's about. But what offseason, right?
[26:25] This is a World Cup year, so it'll be no offseason, no time
[26:28] to work on your skills, right On the training pitch, when you
[26:31] have limited guys, there's a whole lot of time working on
[26:33] some other things, right? Because we don't have time for
[26:35] that. You we've got to prepare for our
[26:37] next match and you got to play here because this is what we
[26:39] have, right? We have no depth behind you.
[26:41] So look, it's gonna be on the club and the board to address
[26:45] some of these situations in the in the offseason, in the summer,
[26:49] right? Do they pick up a deep line
[26:51] playmaker? I don't know.
[26:54] I don't know. I, I think we, we could all talk
[26:56] about who we want and who we think the club and the board
[27:00] should go after. I think we've all been Madrid
[27:03] fans long enough to realize you know who's who and you know how
[27:08] this board operates. I would like to see it.
[27:12] I'm not holding my breath. And don't forget, we've also got
[27:15] guys out all over the place on loan who are also good, right?
[27:19] We've got Camandres, we have Nico, who would be more of a 10,
[27:24] right? And which really wouldn't help
[27:26] our position. But OK, let's say you do bring
[27:28] Nico Paz back, right? Is Nico, Does he then now become
[27:32] your 10 and now Judy is your 8? Is that what you do?
[27:36] I don't know. Again, these are all decisions
[27:38] that the board, whoever our head coach is, I hope Chavi Alonso
[27:45] and the president have to discuss, right.
[27:48] We we've talked at Nose and I encourage you guys to go back
[27:50] and listen to a lot of our most more recent pods where I do a
[27:54] bigger, a bigger sort of overview of the club and look at
[28:02] what the issues are and why it needs to be a top down decision,
[28:08] right? It can't just be one person
[28:09] saying I want this guy because he's ex right.
[28:12] So we'll see. We'll we'll we'll see if the
[28:15] club has that moment where they realize, OK, it's all good to go
[28:20] after elite superstar players, but if the pieces don't fit and
[28:27] don't mesh, what are we actually doing here?
[28:30] Right. So that's a bigger conversation
[28:33] and something bigger that they'll have to do.
[28:34] We we will have to see if it's something they even they even
[28:37] remotely consider. But that's another day.
[28:39] Right now our focus is on the win today, 51 over Betty's.
[28:44] Next match is Thursday in Saudi against Athleti.
[28:50] In many ways, sadly, how we look in that match and I, I don't
[28:56] think this is necessarily fair, but it is what it is.
[29:00] How we look in that match against athlete will go a long
[29:05] way into what happens with Art of Guler.
[29:07] I'm sorry, with Art of without Javi Alonso And actually as we
[29:10] close here, I'd love to know from the chat what you guys
[29:12] think should what happens at the Super Copa determine what we do
[29:19] with Javi Alonso. And I'll let you guys answer
[29:23] that as we close out here. Again, as always, thank you.
[29:26] Like the video? Subscribe, share it with your
[29:31] friends. We will be on Apple and Spotify
[29:35] so you guys can totally listen to the audio only version.
[29:40] I see one quote here. Javi stays at least till the end
[29:42] of the season at least if we lose a super coat, but he's
[29:45] getting sacked anyway, who cares?
[29:47] 09 says it depends on which coach is available.
[29:49] That's the other thing. If you were a coach who first of
[29:52] all coached Madrid wanna hire #1 so that's that limits the pool
[29:56] right there. If you saw what was going on
[29:58] this year, would you sign up to be a coach at the squad?
[30:01] I know my answer. I I, you know a lot of people I
[30:04] remember earlier in the year was saying get Tuko.
[30:06] Get you think Tuko would sign on for this?
[30:08] Absolutely not right, Like without no way, no way.
[30:13] So again, 51 be happy today Madridistas.
[30:19] We won back within four points of Barsa Thursday at Saudi
[30:24] against Athletic. Sadly for Jabby Alonso's job,
[30:27] most likely we play well and we win that and get to the final
[30:30] and somehow we find a way to to get to to the final against
[30:36] Barsa. Who knows?
[30:40] I'll put this one up from the Miriam.
[30:41] He's 100 and 110% getting sacked, getting the sack if we
[30:44] lose Super Copa, Arbeloans, Laura, the names, but we
[30:47] shouldn't hinder Arbeloa. There's Raul too.
[30:50] Look, I don't if Jabby Alonso methods were not being listened
[30:58] to, what makes anyone think that are below's methods are going to
[31:00] be listened to? Whoever's comes in here, whether
[31:03] it's too cool or below whoever, they're going to want to
[31:06] implement a particular system and a style, right and some
[31:10] discipline. And clearly what we've seen is
[31:13] the club pushing back on it and club by club I mean the players.
[31:16] So I don't know, like, right, I, I, I, I don't know.
[31:22] I'll put this one in here at the buzzer.
[31:23] I had a good feeling about the Super Cooper and I don't want to
[31:25] see Javi sacked for a super Cooper.
[31:26] Give him the season. Look, we've seen this, right?
[31:30] How long did it take Tukal, Tukal, excuse me.
[31:32] How long did it take Luis Enrique to get his project going
[31:36] at PSG? 18 months.
[31:41] So the idea that you gave Javi Alonzo 6 months, seven months,
[31:45] that's just that's just poor form by by by the powers that be
[31:49] at Real Madrid, but we've discussed that in in other
[31:51] events. All right, guys, thank you all
[31:53] in the comments for tuning in. I really appreciate it.
[31:56] And Miriam, who cares? Dave, the 4th really appreciate
[32:01] you guys being in here. Thank you so much.
[32:03] Again, we will see you after the athlete team match on Thursday.
[32:07] Take care.

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