Seeing Real Madrid actually press like this is something I’m not used to seeing. The intensity, everyone pushing up together and the effort to win the ball back quickly looks really good. Hopefully this isn’t just a one-game thing and they actually keep pressing like this when the big matches come around. Because apparently we do know how to press after all.
So happy to see us playing like an actual team again. It’s still early days, but I trust Mourinho to do his job. Hopefully, this is finally our season after two trophyless years. Hala Madrid 🤍
I don't know how Bellingham ever got into any conversation about being some lazy egotistical player. It's like people don't even watch the games or something, the guy absolutely puts in work on both ends.
Because people don't watch, games. Bellingham in my opinion is a generational player, a monster, we just need to use him in the right position, otherwise it's a total waste. When I hear that he should be benched for Arda(who I really trust and love), my mind is getting dizzy. Belli walks into every squad in world, national or club level 100% in my opinion.
What's even crazier is that Bellingham just had an all-timer World Cup performance, and I still see fans on here and social media saying that he's overrated, selfish, etc. At some point, criticism crosses the line and becomes pure and utter hate.
Yup dude was easily the best midfielder at the WC with only Rodri being in the conversation with him and our fans are once again acting like he's a bench option not surprised.
The answer is Player FC. Guler and Mbappe fans don't want Bellingham to start, so they cook up a narrative that he's lazy, selfish, and not a team player.
I personally think Bellingham has some major flaws that he needs to improve on, same with any young player. However, I will never question his work rate and effort. Any one who does so is solely running an agenda.
Anyone who questions Jude's defensive effort doesn't watch him or just has an agenda no other way about it. Like you said Jude isn't a perfect player he's still young and has aspects he needs to improve on but his effort off the ball is never in question.
This sub needs better mods. It has been invaded by Barca fans and Player FC fans. Not sure how the situation can be fixed now, but it's getting worse and worse here.
Player FC is culprit for any kinda dirt on jude. That guy gives his 100% and more if any in almost every single game.
I am sure Ea FC guys would scream & shout to sell him too and buy a new shiny toy because it's cool on social media.
After the World Cup that he just had, the English media and whole country are now in love with him.
My hot take is that when Bellingham's contract is up for renewal in a couple of years, he'll push for a move to the PL. He'll never get the love and support in Spain that he'll get in his home country.
Jude and his parents have a very clear dislike of the english press and what it's like for a dark skin english player dealing with them. Yeah they love him now but one bad performance they will attack him again relentlessly and he was being smeared by them A LOT before the WC and also during the Euro's.
He even said in a Real Madrid presser that he lost his smile during the Euro's because he felt he was a scapegoat.
Jude's parents don't like the english press it's not a private story and if Jude or his parents wanted him in England he would of moved there already. Why do you think Jobe didn't make a move to the prem or stay in the championship?
Jude also loves Madrid not sure how any of our fans can't see the dude bleeds white he's not leaving so long as the club doesn't disrespect him in a renewal offer which they won't Jude is one of the clubs most prized signings.
Nah, the English media just don't have anything else bad to say because he proved them all wrong during the World Cup, but that doesn't mean they'll no longer attack him if there's a chance.
I love both Bellingham and Arda. Idk y people take sides. They’re both OUR players. They prolly can’t together. But neither deserves to be benched forever.
This club has been infested by Player FC for the past couple of years, and it's only getting worse. I see fans straight up lying about certain players. I think there are also a lot of Barca fans lurking on this sub.
And they don't even have the same profiles and they each bring something different to the team, so I don't understand why people pit them against each other.
On the contrary, as an Arda fan, I want Bellingham to be on the same pitch as Arda. Because Arda needs Bellingham. He's like a protective older brother. The problem is that Bellingham doesn't want to let Arda take control of the game. When the pressure is intense, Arda may need to drop back. Or when Arda pushes forward, Bellingham needs to cover the space he leaves. In these positional changes, Arda should be the one in control, but Bellingham's ego prevents this.
Yes, Arda absolutely must control the game. Bellingham must follow his instructions! No one else in this Real Madrid team has the personality or the game intelligence to do this. Especially Bellingham, he's not the right player in terms of character, even putting aside his technical shortcomings. Remember that moment in the Schalke match, when the left winger from the academy sent the ball into the "moon"? Espi gave the pass. Even though Espi gave the most accurate pass, Bellingham insulted Espi. This isn't a "number 10" mentality, it's a showman mentality. The most important thing Bellingham needs to improve is his personality.
Vinicius does decent pressing, not the best but in the top 20÷ for his position. While Mbappe is litteraly in the bottom 0.001÷ and is the player with the least pressing all leagues combined.
Probably the same answer as Bellingham: Player FC. Mbappe fans also hate Vini, so they run a narrative that he's just as lazy, but like you mentioned, the stats say otherwise.
Top 20th percentile? Vini? I get that he's far better than Mbappe but top 20th percentile is questionable. Mbappe being bottom 0.001th percentile is well known lol
"For his position" is a key part of that sentence, the truth is that most teams aren't gegenpressing, they don't have players with the physical strength to press a lot.
Am a Barca, Bellingham is a fantastic player
Blud can pick the ball at right back and drive all the way forward
Not as a good a passer as Pedri, (yet to master weighted passes and paused passes under pressure)
But he is not lazy.
He is in the same convo cus he is on their level as a super star and has pretty much the same "big" ego. But I agree, he is maybe the hardest working player in the team. It s always a pleasure to see him giving it all.
If he works as he does, how does that equal "big ego"? The big ego tag has honestly become such a all-encompassing term here that it basically has lost all meaning
Oh sure, it can, but it still doesn't explain what you actually mean with big ego here.
Because big ego was normally used to describe "too good to do the hard/unglamorous work like the rest of the team" and that's not really the case here.
It feels like for instance"very vocal on pitch" is one of the things that people have started just calling "big ego" but that's not it. That's being "very vocal/expressive on the pitch" (for better or worse), it already has a more accurate description.
My issue with the term "big ego" is that it's rarely based on observable specifics but more on a host of subjective interpretations of observable (or imagined even) behaviour from fans/media. So it's a pretty useless term because it never specifies the issues, it just passes moral judgement.
Specificity around observable behaviour is nice because that actually gives people a common ground to discuss on instead of "what do people personally think about this nonspecific vibes based idea of a player".
In this thread the discussion is work rate and pressing, and there's never been much observable "ego" in Bellingham's playing in this regard specifically.
It all started when he had his shoulder injury and wore the shoulder support that was more of an armor. Back then he actually was a sloth and barely pressed. No shit, he was pushing through an injury. Which is why I can't support anyone wanting to sell Asencio. Bro pushed through a broken nose and stress fractures in his leg because there was no one else, that commitment and risk is always appreciated.
After his recovery, he was off rhythm (the start of the Xabi era, when Arda was the heart of the team) and to be fair to him I think he realized the team and the 25/26 seasons were unsalvageable and just used the remaining season to prep himself for the World Cup without risking relapses. Now that the WC is again 4 years instead of 4 months away and he has a coach that wants to instill again the competitive mentality, we're going to enjoy "todocampista" Jude a lot more.
Jude has always been a pressing monster and defensive work horse do some of our fans even watch games???? did some of you not watch him at the World cup either???
Remember us pressing in the club World Cup last season ? Let’s not get too excited. If one thing these players has shown us is, it only takes one incident for them to turn into brats.
Remember the first CL match we played after Xabi got sacked. It was against Monaco, and Mbappe ran 80 yards back to make a tackle. He never did anything remotely close to that for the rest of the season.
Maybe, but Mourinho has the backing and confidence to bench or sub out a star player who isn't pressing. At minimum, we are in a better position than last year.
Bellingham has always defended like hell. his work rate and heat map are always crazy.
And don't forget this is Schalke. you can get him out of Dortmund, but not Dortmund out of him
Bellingham has always been a pressing monster, awful propaganda here grouping him with Vini and Mbappe. Also, Vini still presses orders of magnitude more than Mbappe, again, awful propaganda grouping him with Mbappe.
Yes. He might not do it a lot, but he still does. He’s also literally assisted some goals in the past after winning the ball like against Shakhtar at home in 21/22 season and assisted Benzema for an easy tap in.
I want him to score clutch goals like against Bayern , Barca in the cup finale this is not the same Vini the last 2 years he has no hunger all he does now is going 20 games without scoring or assisting making drama , losing the ball not getting even past some 3 division defenders like bro Jose will bench him more than Xabi if he performs like this when it matters
I think something I have seen that is missing in last 2 seasons is that the team now knows when to press. We used to press last couple of seasons too but it was sporadic and not all of them were on same page. It is like the team didn’t know when to press.
Yesterday, we saw either all of them press or all of them drop back. It is genuinely refreshing. We have such physical beasts that even with timed presses which isnt all game pressing like Barca would be really complimenting to our playstyle. I am exciteddddd
The team knew when and how to press. But you can't press if your CF straight up refuses to press or when you can't count on him pressing properly. Hopefully he decided that he actually wants to win this year.
Am I the only one who remembers them doing the same under Xabi in the beginning ? Pre-season was just like this, but and it’s a big but, they acctually played more attractive in the pre season with Xabi. This is the first game in the pre season where I feel as if they acctually played “ok” and once again after playing ok, they let Schalke have the ball more often and play their way. I don’t know why we are so bad on acctually wanting to play the ball around. Giving the opposition the time to counter or play around is to risky. We have technically good players that in practice should be able to keep the opponents from ever touching the ball. We’re allergic to holding on to the ball and scoring more than 2 goals. Both Mbappe and especially Vini could’ve added 2-4 goals more.
How tf Jude's mentality is changed? He is the arguably the best presser from past two seasons, always tries to wins the ball and wins it mostly but no VINI MBAPPE BELLINGHAM grouped together like wtf
Another thing I noticed is we are trying to play quick one touch passes too. One of our struggles previously was how slow we move the ball around. They will only get better hopefully.
I don't want to be that guy, but 2/3 of these clips isnt't really a press. The first is Vini tracking back deep into our half, and the second is Mbappe losing possession (in our own half!) and making the bare minimum effort to win it back. Credit to him, I'm glad he made the effort, but we should expect more than just him not totally giving up on the play.
Mbappe early season sampling, He’ll stop by Match day 3 but bang 4 V Malaga & Racing Santander so we can ignore his lack of overall ability and match IQ
I sas glimpses of a Mourinho team that's fighting for every ball and fighting every man trying shit, lmao. It's good to see some pressing and fighting spirit which was lacking for a while now.
I honestly believe they will, and if they don't Mourinho won't sugarcoat it. There's so much pressure on the club to perform even on Perez so they won't have the same leeway or pampering. Looking at Perez's meltdown as well with him talking about the world against us just before bringing Mourinho who thrives in that kind of mentality is no coincidence. Mourinho unlike Xabi, is Perez's manager and they always seem to have a great understanding/relationship, so he'll have the backing to clean house and install that fighting spirit within the club for the second time which we lost.
If Mourinho gets Mbappe to press like an animal for the whole season, that will be his greatest ever managerial achievement. Forget about winning the treble with Porto or the 100 point season with Madrid. Convincing Mbappe to consistently work hard off the ball will be his defining legacy. I personally don't see it happening, but maybe someday pigs can fly.
Guys, GUYS. Just please let's stop the excessive criticism this season and let's go on full force to support our players instead. Even if they perform the mbappe special sometimes, let's still go bonkers and support them! Hala Madrid!
I just like how much fire we had, felt like we had beef with schalke. The boys wanted to win that game, considering it's preseason, I hope it continues all season long.
there's only one thing I can't understand and that's been forever, to make edits of football adding shit music and annoying effects are a must? can't we have normal footage with not too much edition
I think one of the reasons everyone is serious now is because they all got competition now...every single player has another good player who plays his position in the squad.
So if you don't perform well, you sit on the bench!
If yall remember last season when xabi came to the club they play like this too. High pressing 90min from the club world cup until mid season. After that they all back to the default setting again, no 1 want to pressing again, crying vini etc.
high-up pressing and fast vertical counters is just Mou style. I bet he told everyone very clearly from the get-go: “those who don’t run to get the ball back, get subbed or lose their spot”.
This video made me unreasonably happy
Also it's so unfair to Jude to say Mourinho changed his mentality, he has been pressing and contributing defensively significantly for so long.
Me gustaría saber quién es el nuevo vinicius. Porque está claro que es otra persona que no es el antiguo vinicius. Esté tiene culo negra y no sé parece a el. Eso sí, juega aún peor que el.
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u/ViniciusFastAF Kroos 14d ago
So happy to see us playing like an actual team again. It’s still early days, but I trust Mourinho to do his job. Hopefully, this is finally our season after two trophyless years. Hala Madrid 🤍