Absolutely freezing cold take. Huijsen has excelled in this devastation Spain is delivering to France.
Yup. I didn't expect Spain to come out playing this good. This is not the same team that won the Euro with Dani, Nacho and Rodri. I also don't want to be that guy who always bashes Mbappe but maybe France will take their cue from PSG, drop him and champagne football their way to the next WC trophy.
France won their 2nd WC in history with Mbappe playing a key role. Not to mention what he did in 2022 final.
Young Varane vibes. Super composed on the ball…always calm. Some good defensive sequences. Stronger than he looks defensively. One or two errors right at the start of the game when France was pushing hard, but settled after about 10 minutes.
Seeing that he maybe presented today. I hope so. Can’t wait to see this young man in the white shirt!
Yup seems like it: https://www.realmadrid.com/es-ES/no...do-oficial-presentacion-de-huijsen-09-06-2025
Dean the dream happy to have you onboard. You could've chased the money but you followed your dream instead. Welcome!
Massively optimistic about the contributions he will be able to make from a ball-progression and long-ball perspective, I also think he's going to be excellent in the air and particularly at defending set pieces for us. I have concerns about him being caught out by the faster attackers in La Liga and the CL, but hopefully it doesn't get exploited too much.
https://www.realmadrid.com/en-US/ne...conference/huijsen-rueda-de-prensa-10-06-2025 Thanks, Dean! I needed the daily reminder that I'm old now.
And. France would have won the WC in 2018 with or without Mbappe. Without prime Griezman, Pogba, Varane, etc., they don't look the same. France wins it 2022 if they had kept Benzema, because as demonstrated Mbappe alone isn't enough but at least Karim plays defense and sets up teammates with assists. Sometime you need team first players instead of players that are only looking to score goals.
Yeah unfortunately you also have the people who don't think he can do anywrong. They constantly bring up his WC final performance in 2022, they will take losing the title everytime if it means Mbappe gets his goals And everytime they will say well he can't do everything while conveniently neglecting to acknowledge he doesn't do all the things that are in his control like pressing, tracking back, setting up teammates with assists, hustling to drag a defender out of position to open a scoring opportunity for other players, etc.
This is supposed to be his strong suit. It's a rare combination, a tall/big CB with good ball control, passing, etc. Reminds me of Pique. As for the composure thing I'm not going to get too ahead because he's still young and I expect mistakes, drops in form, etc. The thing that worries me is he made a really bad mistake late in the second half turned the ball over and basically gifted Hilal a goal. Luckily the forward was caught by surprise and didn't take his time with the shot. That's the risk with playing out of the back and with young inexperienced players it's an even bigger risk because like on this play there can be a tendency to get too cute with the ball and not be fully aware of the context (1 -1 scoreline, late in game, you're in your own box).