What Im saying is that one of the main reasons they cant step up is the tactical and mental deficiencies imposed by the very presence of Mbappe. Yes, hes that much of a figure on the pitch that he can do that singlehandedly. Thats what the heliocentric system is all about. If you have a player that constantly makes the team weaker in the buildup and defensively, one game where his shooting is off means lost points. Sure he becomes a hero the next week when his shooting is on, and we win 3-2 with a hattrick by him. And hes going to have a nice GPG average for the statsheet lovers to look at. But this is just not sustainable. In the end we drop enough points because this is Mbappe ball and Mbappe's Madrid, and when we win its because of him directly and when we lose its also because of him but indirectly. The fact that most people can see only the direct and not the indirect is unfortunate but it doesn't make me wrong in this. So I keep repeating. There are two options. Either guarantee that you will score every game and then by all means walk around and mistime your passes and runs, or accept that youre not going to score every game and that when you dont you need to compensate, find that Dembele in you for defense and get coached how to make better decisions in your positioning and linkup game. I honestly think the second option shouldnt even be that difficult.
Dembele needs to find the Dembele in himself too, because he's been pretty mid for a while. If you put our entire squad up for availability in an expansion draft type situation, Courtois and Mbappe are the first two pulled, possibly from the entire league. When PSG give Dembele the Donnaruma treatment one day, hopefully this myth about iron lung Dembele will finally be over. The fact that Mbappe is the one criticized the most shows that this fanbase is not at a good place right now.
Dembele found himself with World Cup gold, a CL winners medal (with PSG) and the Balon d' Or trophy. He literally lived Kylian Mbappe's dream life.
I feel like some people are watching a different player or have incredibly unreasonable expectations. I can't ask more of Mbappe. He seems to have turned things around, is working hard for the team and is scoring an insane amount of goals. If anything, I can only criticize him for being too humble. In any case, if you're asking Mbappe to put in a shift like Dirk Kuyt, then you may as well come out and say "Mbappe is the big, fat problem and I'll never be convinced otherwise". I reckon Xabi is extremely happy with Mbappe, as he should be.
He destroyed the atmosphere in the team,a player like him was completely not needed Him playing as a striker kills any balance in the attack,him playing means we no longer cross the ball 0 big trophies for him in a Madrid shirt, he is not winning anything here,terrible signing for both parties PSG won.
THE ORIGINAL SIN Seriously this wasn't my favorite team I would enjoy the karma this guy is experiencing now. I mean I don't think he has a clue where any of his teammates are before he receives the ball, except the guy with the ball of course. Just get him to that left wing, get Osimhen to replace Vini and lets cut our damn losses. He can stuff the statsheet from there too.
We can also admit that the "new generation" we brought in to form the next midfield didn't work out the way we imagined, but you'd rather be about the flash than the substance.
If he doesn't score in every game he plays he's an overrated, useless signing that destroyed the chemistry of the team. These people are a joke.
It's all that he's asked to do. Guys like Benzema, Joselu, Morata, etc., they all knew they had to score goals and make assists and play defense and sit on the bench sometimes. Heck even CR7 in his prime was tracking back, defending corners and set pieces and has the 2nd most assists in Real Madrid club history. Mbappe's gets a free ride, doesn't have half the workload everyother CF on the planet has but he also gets to take entire games off from doing his one and only job. GTFO.
That's why i sometimes feel like this fanbase deserves a horrible run to really weed out those that are in it for an easy ride. All we saw today is what happens when Mbappe doesn't put up numbers and Courtois pull down the steel bars in front of goal to mask everything else. The goalscoring, discipline, and overall performance from the rest of the team is very very average.
Yeah, Camavinga is basically a squad player, Arda is either not ready or will never be ready for Madrid, Bellingham cannot impose himself on a game, Valverde is stagnating and looks more and more like a one trick pony.
It’s obvious now He has to score or we can’t win, at least that seems to be the case 98%. And you want to say he didn’t do his job, fine. and that’s not a judgment on him. When people make dumb comparisons like Benzema and Cristiano, when they didn’t score, the team still did well because everyone else did their job. Here we like to judge dude for the failures of his teammates.
The opposite in fact. You disrupt a fragile balance where individualism is already dangerously abundant just to shoehorn someone who us literally the antithesis of a team player in every possible way, in a position where he completely messes up the attacking flow (since hes not and never will be in coordinated movement with others), youre bound to have massive ripple effects. You make the team intentionally dependent on his individual actions just to justify his signing based on his gpg average. Even though this tells far from the whole picture of how and when he gets those goals. And then you wonder why when he doesnt score its his fault. Yeah bro the fact you scored a hattrick last week doesnt mean you are excused now and "someone else needs to step up". Its your team. Learn to ********ing combine with other players and stop thinking defense ia not your job.
You were the first to say that we weren't that good before he joined us, and that we won by sheer gusto and being tough to crack. Now that the magic 8 ball ran out of answers as we removed more and more established pillars, you claim something else. You can afford the luxury of a classic start stop striker (Haaland for example), if you have a hard working team, but the thing is most of our players think they should be the guy and everybody else should be the hard worker. When the tough gets going, the going gets tough, and we're just not a tough team, we're crybabies and suckers, which is why we constantly chase the referee to protect us instead of being the commanding force on the field. It's not just a Vini or Mbappe question, multiple of pour players feel and live as if they are the greatest thing to ever happen.
He can no longer blame Carlo. Funny, I have yet to see the criticism for Xabi for our lack of “beautiful” football. So it must be Mbappe!!!
He was always the problem at PSG and now here,it is what it is ,the most overated player of his generation.Vinni surprassed him,Yamal did,Haaland ,Dembele etc Vinni,Rodrygo,Joselu,Jude used to score and share the goals,this guy came in to play a striker of all positions and killed any chemistry,good vibes etc that we had The best thing that happened to Ral Madrid in the past 5 years was this fraud rejecting us twice,if he didnt we would have never won these 2 CL,because in those 2 CL we needed FIGHT,DEFENDING,SUFFERING as a team etc things we completely lack with his inclusion FRAUD
We werent that good and he made us worse. Now we cant win even by sheer gusto. I dont know what exactly you find strange here. Yes others have their fault too but the most hampering part of the team is Mbappe and Vini, not knowing when to make a run, not knowing when to dribble and when to pass the ball, just straight up playing playground football, and clearly if a coach tells them they do, they go nuts and point him to their stats or trophy haul to prove to him that thats how they should play. They won despite that, due to other circumstances, not because of that. And now theres two of them and the damage to the team is double. Get one out and get a hardworking off ball runner to play a #9 moving Mbappe to the wing, or a hard working high iq passer on the left (Lookman or Scmhid or I dont know who) and keep Mbappe upfront with him being lost half the time. Either way the Vini - Mbappe "connection" is the mother of all problems, no coach can solve it because the players are too stupid and arrogant at the same time, and it became a thing guess why - because we were so obsessed with briging Mbappe here that we didnt think about literally anything except how hot he would look in the white shirt. I swear sometimes it feels like youre illiterate. There are arguments put forth and you resort to duh duh children logic. smfh. do better
lol or I can see through your hypocritical mental gymnastics and call a spade a spade. While you have been consistent in your disdain for Mbappe, last year you were singing the tune of Carlo out, bad football, clueless, etc. then you were twerking your heart out to Xabi football. Now that the football is still shit, it is all because of one player. You writing long paragraphs of mental gymnastics of hypocrisy and me saying YYYEAAAHH OOOOOKKKAY does not make me illiterate.
It's not just Mbappe and Vinicius. It's Mbappe, Vinicius, Bellingham, Rodrygo, among others. The only player in attack that has a clear defined role and performs that to perfection is Mbappe. Bellingham, Guler, Rodrygo, Valverde are being thrown in where they fit in, and seem to all have a grand idea of where they fit despite there being one of the other guys in that position at the same time. Xabi tries to make all this work by constant rotation in both playing time and positional sense, but it creates an environment where nobody really knows what to do. I was at a club where we had a coach that would actually equally split playing time and they lost so much that some of the players actually refused to play, just for the better players to get enough of a run to win some games. I can't help but feel like we do the same, sacrifice the result for the process.
Get a grip man. And get over the freaking Carlo thing. This team needs organization and tactical discipline/direction. Carlo is notorious for giving players maximum freedom. I didnt come up with that theory. Hundreds noticed that. Carlo himself admits it for gods sake. Xabi on the other hand was known for being someone that uses tactical schemes extensively. Personally he wasnt my first choice to replace Carlo anyway, Klopp was. But if a tactical coach isnt able to resolve these issues, then its not about the coach. Whats so hard to understand about it that makes you resort to bullshit childish witticisms? What do you want me to say, bring back Carlo? jfc. No its not one player but the responsibility is not equally spread between the players. One player brings the most disbalance and that player is Mbappe because of everything I stated.
Klopp doesn't fit this club or this team. It's like saying Simeone is your ideal Real Madrid coach, great in theory, just won't happen. You also keep spinning on Mbappe when there's points that deserve to be mentioned such as Guler being Kubo with a better foot. Bellingham being an incredibly single dimensional football player despite being physically gifted, along with us having no idea what to do with all those guys at the same time. If what you're saying is that Mbappe brought imbalance because we have multiple players on the squad that want to do what he does but are less effective doing so to the point where they refuse to do anything else, maybe.
But the responsibility is not equally shared. They all have to contribute of course but division of certain duties is spread out accordingly to the position that each player has. Mbappe’s biggest responsibility is scoring and Militao biggest responsibility is defending. Yes Militao is key to starting the attack with passing and even scoring goals every now and then and Mbappe HAS to press and should come down to help. But we shouldn’t hold Militao accountable when we have scoring droughts not Mbappe for the entire team’s lack of effort defensively or “balance”. Mbappe is not above criticism. You can hold him accountable for not scoring, or for poor movement as you said, or for not pressing. But putting it all on one player as you do is not genuine brother and you know it because you’ve always had a disdain for this player. Balance? Not the midfield, it’s MBAPPE! Defense, not the defenders or DM, it’s MBAPPE. We now have a tactical coach, so when we play poorly it’s also MBAPPE! You are basically saying he is the problem and absolving players who hold a higher portion of those responsibilities in their pie just because IT HAS TO BE MBAPPE
Maybe we need someone who doesn't fit the club. As for the team, it seems no coach fits it. Yet Bellingham was playing at BDO level until Mbappe was thrown into the fray. Guler's trajectory was great until Bellingham's role had to be changed because of Mbappe being thrown into the fray. Call Mbappe the first domino or the final straw, either way the unbalancing starts and ends with him, thats why I say he has the most responsibility. My dislike of Mbappe on a personal level and my assessment of his role in the current issues are two separate things. And as I said the issues were there before him. He just tipped it over the line of bearable. He isn't the one with all the responsibility, but hes the one with most of the responsibility, because you take him out, the impact would be greater (and in my opinion more positive) than by taking out anyone else, for the reasons I stated before: team play, defensive contribution and overall mentality - three aspects in which he has a devastatingly negative impact that offsets his positive impact with the goals.