“José Mourinho Can Fix Real Madrid”
Remember when the only thing Real Madrid had to worry about was each ball memes and AI generated slop of Kylian Mbappe as a fascist? [music] We are long past those days. Nowadays, we have a second straight trophy-less year, AI slop recreations of players brawling being played on Spanish TV, the fact that the team plays better without their star player, players pretending to fall asleep during training sessions of the lost coach, and a bunch of them refusing to even speak to the current one.
To top it all off, players’ moms are apparently calling Florentino Perez complaining about their son’s game time. I can only imagine that a lot of what’s come out lately is likely either exaggerated or fiction. But, where there is smoke, we all know that there is usually fire. Real Madrid is in serious, serious crisis.
Meanwhile, Barcelona are genuinely having the time of their lives. And, would you believe it? Tier one Portuguese reporters claim that Florentino Perez has assessed the entire situation and thought to himself that only one man can fix this. HE’S BACK! [screaming] [music] HELLO EVERYONE, HOPE YOU’RE doing well. Welcome back.
So, I tried to write this video on Friday, but every time I did, a new story would pop up surrounding Real Madrid to the point where I just thought I’d just wait until after the Clasico instead of hitting refresh constantly. So, [music] did I pre-record a lot of this video knowing that Barcelona were likely going to be crowned champions after this match? Well, you just saw the intro, didn’t you? It it seemed like a probable outcome.
Also, am I suffering from a violent case of hay fever? Yes, yes I am. But, this video needs to be made. One Mourinho, I really do not like to play the speculation game. You guys know I usually only try to make videos about things that are confirmed. The same goes for transfers. But, this is Real Madrid and Jose Mourinho, guys.
This is potential box office, guys. I feel like this is the sort of news that would bring a lot of people that have stepped away or lost interest in the game right back in as soon as it’s announced if it’s announced. So, we’re talking Real Madrid, Mourinho, and more today. I don’t want to talk too much about El Clasico in this video.
I think that should be reserved for a more Barcelona-centric video for for obvious reasons. What I will say is that this was just a horror show by Madrid. Barcelona never really got into the full swing of things. Thibaut Courtois was probably maybe the best player on the pitch for Madrid, which which tells you all you really need to know in a 2-0 loss.
By the end, the ref had enough Madrid got their pity whistle. Game ended on 90 minutes almost to the second. Obviously, I’m not taking anything away from Barcelona, but as for Madrid, what did we all expect? This is a broken club on the pitch with so many players missing. It’s no wonder that Real Madrid suffered like this, but it’s not like that’s the only reason for this season’s collapse.
The data suggests that Real Madrid are actually a better side when their best player [music] does not even play. Now, we’ve already spoken about the issues surrounding Kylian Mbappé and Real Madrid at so many points over the course of the season. The fact that him and Vinícius Júnior take up a lot of the same spaces, that’s old news.
The fact that the entire team gravitates around him when it comes to the attack. This was more particular to the Xabi Alonso era, but it still remains. Although his numbers this season are undoubtedly sublime, he equaled Cristiano Ronaldo’s best ever calendar year goal tally at Madrid in his very first full calendar year with the club no less.
But, it really doesn’t seem like that output is working to serve anyone other than himself. Here’s a graphic from Transfermarkt on Real Madrid’s fortunes with and without Kylian Mbappé. This is a problem, but it’s tactical. Tactics can be fixed and adjusted. The problems that these guys have, I feel like they go beyond quick fixes and tactical issues.
[music] Let’s get into the biggest headline, Fight Club. Fede Valverde versus Aurélien Tchouaméni. Most sources state that the first scuffle between Valverde and Tchouaméni occurred on Wednesday, the 5th of May after Valverde gave Tchouaméni a stiff tackle in training. Following that, news of this spilled into the public eye.
The craziest thing is that all of the reporting of the first one states that the two almost came to blows following the session, but that cool heads prevailed. The very next day, as per AS, Valverde aggressively accused Tchouameni of leaking the details of the first bust-up, leading Tchouameni to give him a stiff arm, causing Valverde to fall on the floor, cut his head open, and leave training in a wheelchair.
In an Instagram post, Valverde claims he slipped and hit his head on a table. And you know what? I believe him. If this was the table, Madrid publicly laid disciplinary actions against Tchouameni and Valverde amounting to 500,000 euros each. Now, I know we all gawk at player salaries these days, and these are multi-multi-millionaires, but even for multi-millionaires, 500k straight off the bat for a fine, that’s a big hit.
Adding insult to injury to Valverde, brother got knocked out, and then as soon as he woke up, they hit him with a half a million euro fine. [laughter] Jesus Christ. To put this into perspective, in the NBA, fines are capped at $50,000 for punching, which includes suspensions, of course. Except everyone at Real Madrid is injured or unavailable, so they could not suspend either of them.
Aurelien Tchouameni played in the Clasico. Of course, Valverde did not play for reasons. Rumor has it that this is the footage of Tchouameni visiting Valverde in the hospital. Of course, that was some sort of meme that I thought was relevant to that joke, which I’m only going to insert later on. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but the point is that so much of this could be false.
But I will say one thing, I haven’t seen comunicados like this ever from Real Madrid. And the severity of all of it, the fact that they publicly came out and and told us about these fines, how severe they were, the heftiness of all of it, it makes me believe a lot of these reports. This was all three days before the Clasico that pretty much decided the league.
But the worst thing about all all this for Real Madrid is that this is just the latest in a long string of mishaps that have been going on at the Bernabeu. A few days earlier, Antonio Rudiger reportedly slapped Alvaro Carreras after the draw against Real Betis. Kylian Mbappe verbally abused a member of the coaching staff after they called him offsides in a training match, which really doesn’t sound too bad.
We see players do this on live TV during matches all the time, but this made the news somehow. Apparently, it was worse than what we can imagine. Who knows? And then, an injured Mbappe has been accused of going on holiday with his partner instead of rehab. And then, over the course of the season, there’ve been all these little stories about arguments between players like Mbappe, Vinicius Junior, Bellingham, Rodrigo, and and all that sort of stuff that the normal tabloid stuff.
The dressing room has more leaks than a Tom Holland interview. Now, of course, none of these situations are ideal, but as I alluded to when talking about the Mbappe situation, apart from the Valverde and Tchouameni fights, I feel like these incidents are things that happen at most football clubs on a weekly basis.
Heck, I would say most sporting institutions on a weekly basis. Quarrelling between players, threatening violence, acting out violence. These are hot-blooded competitors at the top of their game, after all. Anybody that’s, you know, played any competitive contact sports at almost any level knows this. But, the frequency of the leaks, what we know about Real Madrid’s history, and everything in between, it paints a grim picture.
I wasn’t old enough to understand the dynamics of the first major Galacticos era at the time. I was [music] just getting to an age where I was able to kind of understand the dynamics of the second Galacticos era when that happened. But, for some reason, I feel as though it has never been this toxic. Someone in that dressing room is yapping nonstop.
I read an article the other day that was saying that Madrid staff are giving different pieces of information to different people to see what comes out in the news and try and catch them all. I’d say we’re only a few days away from Rebekah Vardy being named as the leak. Sources say Coleen Rooney knew the whole time.
Speaking of Rooney, too soon, Wayne. Too soon. At this point, how does anyone at this club trust anyone else? All of these problems seem to be symptomatic of a wider issue. There just seems to be no authority or leadership in that dressing room. Real Madrid has always been a club where player power has reigned supreme.
It’s what happens when you prioritize star power over, you know, chemistry and functionality. Now, I personally think that it was around the Vinicius Júnior Ballon d’Or situation where the entire Real Madrid team decided to not attend the ceremony for what they perceived to be a massive injustice of Rodri winning over Vinicius.
Everybody unanimously understood what the score was, I think, at that point. I still don’t understand why Florentino Pérez allowed this to happen. I don’t recall them ever coming close to supporting Ronaldo like this over all the times that Messi won over him. Truly, I cannot believe Xabi Alonso was responsible for all of this.
Either way, this was the table around when Xabi Alonso was sacked. This is the table today. So, was Alonso the problem? I mean, obviously, he should shoulder some of the blame. A manager’s job, at the end of the day, is about handling personalities, but I think at this point, most of us realize that he was fighting a losing battle.
In the beginning, Pérez thought that Carlo Ancelotti was past his time and craved change. Xabi Alonso came in, Madrid legend, fresh ideas, known to demand a lot from his players, and had Madrid challenging for everything. He did everything that they presumably hired him for, demanded a lot from the players, asked them to work really hard for the badge, and it seems that because of that, he was sacked.
And a lot of the stories that are coming out around this now are just ridiculous. Players pretending to fall asleep during video analysis sessions, openly showing discontent with Alonso’s rigid training sessions and methods. The split between players playing for him and against him grew larger and larger. According to many articles, one of the biggest in opposition of Alonso was Fede Valverde.
Amongst the players that were in favor of Alonso was Aurelien Tchouameni. The fact that Vinicius Junior was not his biggest fan was extremely evident following his lashing out after being subbed out in the first classico of the season. He did not like that Mbappe was given so much preference over him and that his role was being diminished and at some point Xabi Alonso just got so sick and tired of it that he just he let everyone know how he really felt.
I didn’t know I was coming to a daycare center. His sacking was inevitable. Alvaro Arbeloa replaced him. Things got worse. Madrid slipped further down the table, were knocked out of the Champions League by Bayern Munich. Some players have reportedly stopped speaking to him entirely because they know he’ll be gone before them.
And of course Dana White’s been in contact about hosting UFC at the Bernabeu. [music] A lot of it is jokes but at the end of the day we all know that he can’t really handle these players. Something that strongly highlighted in all of the reporting around the Valverde-Tchouameni incident is that Alvaro Arbeloa was there for all of it and he did [music] absolutely nothing.
It confirms what most of us have suspected for a very long time. Losing Toni Kroos, Nacho, Joselu, Luka Modric, and Lucas Vazquez in two years all without replacements in leadership makes all of this make sense. Alvaro Careras is 23. Instead of being led, he’s being slapped by Antonio Rudiger, 33. Fede Valverde has been part of the first team for seven years.
Aurelien Tchouameni has been part of it for four years. These are supposed to be the replacements for leadership. Instead, Real Madrid’s juniors will forever have the image of their captain getting smacked out cold in the dressing room. It seems like a lot of these Real Madrid players feel like they can do whatever they want and get away with it because that’s what’s been happening.
Unless you knock out your teammate, you’re going unpunished. Slack off in training, badmouth the manager and the training staff, just do whatever you want, you’ll be good. But maybe maybe that’s about to change. Reportedly, in steps Jose Mourinho. I was reading an article in The Athletic about Real Madrid on this entire fiasco and it ended it ended quite curiously for me.
The article essentially theorized that it may not be a coincidence that all of this craziness around Madrid has spilled into the media. Outlets such as Marca and AS are known for not really being overly critical of Real Madrid or as some people may put it in Florentino Perez’s pocket. Yet, if you browse either websites dedicated Real Madrid pages, you’ll see that they were amongst the first to report all of this.
The prevailing theory is that this was all done to pave the way and justify the need for the return of the special one, someone to bring order to the madness. Since leaving Real Madrid, Jose Mourinho has had a lot of jobs with varying degrees of success, you know, Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur, Fenerbahçe, Benfica. At some point after the Tottenham Hotspur job there, I think a lot of people they thought that he was no longer a good fit in the modern game.
He’s historically been at his best with disciplined players that respond to heat and pressure. It’s proven to be unsustainable almost everywhere that he goes with the exceptions of places like Porto and Inter with factions at the other places bound to form with those for and against them. If you don’t believe me, ask Iker Casillas’s partner from 2013.
Right off the bat, if you’ve been half paying attention to this video, you’d think that things won’t bode well for him with this current Real Madrid squad. I’ve made several videos on Jose Mourinho in the past, his personality, his achievements. I’ll link them below and there are still more to come such as his Porto and Inter phases which will be made over the coming weeks.
But, for the purposes of this video, it’s worth noting that this man is hired and consistently gets work for a good reason. He does have a thing for bringing the best out of a unit, initially at the very least when when people are really eager to please. He may not be walking into ideal surroundings, but let’s not forget that Jose Mourinho managed Real Madrid to their best ever season.
He gave them grit. He revived them from a period where everyone thought that Barcelona was going to run away with everything. He essentially built the mindset of the team that went on to win La Decima and then do the famous three-peat under Zinedine Zidane. Three Champions Leagues in a row. In my eyes, that team was as much José Mourinho’s as it was Carlo Ancelotti’s and Zinedine Zidane’s.
So, perhaps perhaps that’s all that’s needed. Perhaps not. And there we have it. Let me know what you all think about Real Madrid. That’s all for me today. Hope you guys enjoyed. Hope you’re having a great day. Cheers and I will catch you in the next one. Hit. Uh.
