Hello and welcome to the Double Cat, the world's most agreeable soccer at all list podcast. I am Michael Kayley. We are back. The season is ending.
There is still a real open race for the final Champions League slots. In the Premier League, there is an open race for the final Champions League slots. In Italy, there is still Escudetto Chese. There are still two finals to be played and that means it's time for us to talk about the transfer market.
Yes, I love this time of year. I am joined by Mike Goodman. We are back on our bullshit music here in the main as well as. Please download subscribe to happiest podcasts patreon.com doublepivot come hang out in the discord.
Lots of stuff going on there. I think I mentioned this on the last podcast. There is a. There's a new, like puzzle video game out that that is.
Apparently I have not played it. It is all the talk of the. Of the Nerd Gaming Channel, except everybody's really judicious about spoilers. So if you go into the Nerd Gaming Channel right now, it is just an endless wall of redacted text.
It's wonderful. And I don't actually know what's being said because, like, I have the theory that I might play this one day. Although, like, they're talking about the camera scrolls are just full up of them taking pictures of the game for like, because they don't know what is. There isn't a clue.
And like, man, I may just be too old for that. Anyway, let's talk about transfers. Specifically, let's talk about Real Madrid. Yeah.
Finally it is public. It is confirmed Carlo Ancelotti is taking the Brazil job. It is public, it is confirmed Xabi Alonso is leaving by a lever accusing. It is not yet confirmed that Jabbi Alzo is going to Real Madrid.
But let's be real. Xavier Lonzo is going to Real Madrid. So let's talk about what Real Madrid will be in the age of Jabi Alonso. Yeah, and it hasn't been like contract signed, but Trent Alexander Arnold will be joining him there.
Sure seems that way. I mean, you know, nothing's done until it's done. But like, yeah, I think it's a good time to talk about Real Madrid on top of that. Because among the things that are not in play are the La Liga title.
Correct. Because Real Madrid, who end up two nil on Barcelona, lost four three in a classico that could have at least put a title like, made it a story like Barca probably would have won the remaining games. And that wouldn't have mattered, but it would have made it close enough that one more slip by Barca could have put the title in play. Instead, they created like 7.5 xg against real dredge and won the game.
So, I mean, I think that like, that game in particular is not necessarily indicative of where Real Madrid have been this year, but that game in particular is sort of a comically extreme version of the fact that Real Madrid have very good attackers, they have very low passing in midfield and their defenders are all hurt. Yes. And that's just not an elite level mix, because when you have that mix of things, you have no way to control the game. You can't control the game with the ball and you can't control the game without the ball.
And you can kind of be a counter attacking team, like a counter pressing attack quickly team. But usually you need a backline that can make individual plays behind that. And like, they just lack that. I posted on BSKI and it's always fun when you do a soccer post and then you're like totally correct about the way the game is going to play out, that there just weren't any really good defenders in the entire game.
The one really, really good defender was playing out of position. Cunani is a fantastic defensive midfielder. He is the sort of guy that if you're playing him at the six and playing an off ball game, he could give you some degree of off ball control. But he's not playing at the 6, he's playing at centred because everyone's hurt.
And like Real Madrid, conceding this much to Barcelona is greatly a function of not having a bunch of guys like, we're suspended, ruder, suspended. Which makes a huge difference. A theoretical version of Real Madrid is one where they are able to control the game because Camavinga, Tchouameni and Valverde and Bellingham give them just an exceptional amount of coverage of the center of the pitch defensively. And then behind them they've got Rudiger and Militao Asensio end up working out.
They don't have much in the way of fullbacks, but it's okay because the other team has to be really scared of attacking on the wings because of how good their winners are. Like, there's a theory of the case there and we really didn't get to see that case tested very much this year because of the injuries. Yeah, I mean, it's too bad because what's interesting to me to think about on that level is are they getting Enough pressing and defensive contribution out of Mbappe, Vini and probably Rodrigo. Or do you say, no, we're not.
So Rodrigo can't play. Maybe Valverde plays high. And however you want to construct it, like, what is the way we get enough pressing out of this to make that work? But they were just never healthy enough along the back line consistently this year to really, like, ask and answer that question.
And in order to, like, bolster the back line, they kept moving too many last season. Kamavinga into the defensive line. And then you're playing a lot more minutes with like, Nancy Bios. If you.
We don't have a way to move the ball forward. Okay, Daniels, move the ball forward. He's good at that. He's not great.
He's good at that, but he's just not giving you enough defense against a team that is going to require you to cover tons of ground like Barcelona did. Right. Like, if you're putting Danny Bios in the midfield or a Dany Sibios, like, figure what you need is a team around, you know, a team that can contribute defensively out of possession. Right.
Like, you need to be able to, like, defend in a medium block and control the game without the ball, and then you win the ball back and Ceballos and co can move it forward to your very dangerous attacks. Yeah. And like, you could envision a world where that works too. And, like, the problem is that the, like, vision of Real Madrid working out, that I sort of lead out, has a lot of hand waving about how the ball moves from the defensive.
Like, say, how does the ball move from 30 yards from Real Madrid's goal to 30 yards from the opponent's goal? Like, it has a very much is like that meme of ball just goes from here to there. Don't worry. And once they get to the penalty area, lots of great stuff can happen if you've got Mbappe and Vinny and Bellingham and you've got defenders behind them.
But one way that a team without a lot of passers at the back can make the ball show up in the attacking zone is to win the ball between 30 and 50 yards from that goal. That is the classic. The best playmaker in the world is the high press. We don't need a Tony Cruz or Luka Modric.
We can press and win the ball. And then when we win the ball, Mbappe and Vin are screaming at you and you're screwed. And then you get so scared of that press, you end up giving us the ball and we can get into Our attacking zone very easily and like there is that virtuous cycle, which is what Barcelona have run on all season, is not available to Real Madrid. So long as there isn't a press that can, that like can work with Mbappe and vi.
So now we come to next season and I think there are two interacting questions here. How does Jabi Alonso want to play with these concepts and then what does Trent bring to this club that they didn't have? I think the Trent side is a little like more cut and dry, black and white. So like I think we should start there.
He passes the ball forward a lot. He is not a great defender in a, in a, in a block along the back line. He's okay. He's not great and he's a pretty good presser.
So if he's getting up field and you lose the ball, he is a very valuable contributor to a counter press if you want to play that way. Those are sort of like what I think of like the buckets of Trent stuff. Those are the three primary things I think of. Yep.
And so if you have a team that doesn't have a plan for how the ball moves those 40 yards like Trent Alexander Arnold is one of the players in world football who just magically moves the ball those 40 yards for you enough to run a top level attack. Just the ball goes to Trent and Trent passes the fours. Trent has four attackers to pick from. He's got to find one of them and put the ball there.
Like that's just it. Now the weird thing about Trent is that you describe a player like that and you're like, well, that's like a classic deep blind midfielder, but he's never really plays. It seems like whatever it is exactly about Trent, you get that magical production out of him playing it right back. And that's the space he goes, that's the space that he gets the ball.
He tucks inside. He sets up in like a secondary. Either he gets the ball wide in the early phase where he gets the ball more in the center and the secondary phase of the possession and moves forward like you kind of like you gotta play in the average goes. Look, I think when I think of Trent's passing, the thing that comes to mind to me is Arden Robin's dribbling.
You know, Robin was always gonna cut it on his left foot, always. And everyone was like, oh, he's one sided. You can take it away from him. But you couldn't because he would cut it on his left now or he would move up the sideline.
And cut it on his left later or he would still move up the sideline and cut it on his left layer. And all of that, like all of that space he created for himself because he's going to eventually cut in would allow him to just move way up the field on you. And when I look at Trent and if you put Robin in the middle of the field, he was going to go right or left. He was going to try to use that same dynamic wherever he was on the field.
Right. When I look at Trent's passing, what I see is he's either going to go up the line or he's going to go into the channel with the ball. And if you put him at the six, he's not picking passes into either channel. From there he's like his range of passing is, is not limited, but it's only not limited when he's coming from right back into the sort of right sided Kevin de Bruyne office.
And it doesn't expand when you move him to the six. From what we see. It's not like now that he has more options. He has a wider range of passes than he breaks down.
He really does not seem to. Yeah. And he's not a spectacular ball carrier, but if he is matched up on a soft one on one defense, he can push forward up the wing in a way that like he can't from the six. And the other thing is he's also a very, very good final third career.
Yep. Which like we're talking about, like we're like focusing here on his box of pressure. He's one of the best in the world. But if he joins an attack in sustained possession, he is very, very good at putting the ball into the box for chances as well.
Like elite. On the one hand you are taking a Real Madrid team that we just described as having a hole. And then we just described one of the players in the world who is the very best at filling that hole. And we just described a Real Madrid team that is full up on high quality midfielders who happen not to have that skill but has big holes in the back line.
One place where he feels like on a certain level Trent is just the most obvious transfer you've ever heard of. And now comes Xabi Alonso. Because what we don't know what Xabi Lanzo is going to do. We know what he has done.
And what he has done does not sync with Trent. Nope. Right. You know, there's a temptation to be able.
Trent is a very attacking right back. Xavier Lanzel plays with wing Backs, you know, go forth. Javier Alonso, one of like the cool innovations of Xavier Alonso is in an age of your wing backs are also midfielders. Xavier Alonso's wing backs were forwards, especially his right wing back.
It was just an inside forward who then when you had a defense for a while was the right flank of the defense. That's what it was. And so what defines Xavi Alonso's best teams? And so he's been at Leverkusen for three seasons and the first season was good, but like not nearly at the level that the second and third seasons were.
And a separate thing just to put aside here, leveraging has been like awful for two months. Inexplicably terrible, more or less fit and just God awful bad. I don't get it. I don't have.
I've watched them and they're just banner on the penalty area. I have no idea. But that aside, you've got these two seasons of top level football. And the keys to those top level teams were one, as Mike is saying, the flying wingbacks.
The flying wing back you did see the first season. And then the other things you've got are Granit Xhaka at the base of midfield, getting on the ball constantly. Just shows for the ball. Moves the ball often, moves it forward, keeps the ball every single time.
And you've got Florian Wirtz as a sort of 10 wing. You would have Wirtz as one of two behind a central striker. And at their best, that was Jonas Hoffman. He has really not played this season.
He's 32. They kind of squeezed one last great season out of him for their big title in a year. And this allows you to move the ball up the pitch because of all of the passers you've got and because of the creative passers and dribblers you have behind the striker who can then find the wings. And this team after its first season also started pressing much, much higher.
They started out as a team that really did not press much. I don't know to what degree like Xavi was teaching his possession stuff. To what degree not having those kind of passers. Wirtz was injured for the season and Xhaka didn't come until later.
Who wants to read that? I don't know exactly why that first Leverkusen team took some time to settle in as, but those two things happened at once. They added all of this passing and they started pressing at the same time. And both of those things I'm describing from the shaper, you've got like two central midfielders and two guys behind the striker reward central players from the talent.
You've got dribbly tens and you've got a fantastic possession progression, deep blind midfielder and you've got flying wing X. None of this sounds like real talent at all. And on top of that they became a really depressing team which again has been an issue for real. I think that a system, it depends what flows from what.
When you think about the Xavier Alonso mental tactics flowchart, I think a system which says, hey, we have a trident of attackers that play more narrow than most ones and then we'll flow from there. You can see that I think at Real Madrid, whether it is Mbappe Vini Rodrigo or Mbappe Vinnie Bellingham, you can see how that might work. If the flowchart is we want a guy in midfield, on the ball all the time, everybody flows from that. I don't see how that works at Real Madrid at all.
If the flowchart is I want to like my wing backs are inside forwards. That's the innovation that I have that I want to continue to use. And we will figure out everything around that. I don't see how that works for Real Madrid.
I think if the system is we want to play a some form of 3, 4, 3 and everything else we will figure out, I think that can work. Right. And so I think there's a lot of questions here. We're going to learn a lot about Xavier Alonso fairly quickly because to me, I really do think that if you want to play three fourth three, you can play three center backs with, you know, Trent Alexander Arnold as the ball progressing right wing back who is a provider in the final third instead of a box attacker in the final third, you can put Mbappe, Vini and Bellingham in a front three and those skills in that relative system will work.
You can put Chulabini and Camavinga as rangy defense protecting center midfielders who don't do a lot of ball progressing or getting on the ball, but do do a tremendous amount of keeping you on the, on the front foot and all in the attacking half attacking and you fill in a left wing back. And like to me that's a good tee, right? Like to me that is a thing that works. It's a little bit different than what Jabby Alonso has done.
It's a lot different. Don't want Jabilonso does that stuff. But if you want to play 3, 4, 3, I don't think there is inherently a 3, 4, 3 problem at Real Madrid. No, the 1, 3, 43 problem at Real Madrid is that they are thin at the backline.
Yes. If they're going to do that, they go out by a center back or two. Well, at least two. Yeah.
Ruiner as the central center back has a way of keeping him fit at 33. Like I can see it, but you're risking injuries. Mila Kalash is very, very good so long as he's fit. Asencia looks good, but he's young.
Alaba can play if he's fit. There are reports that Realms are going to get a center backflip. Really get a center back at playing that forward back for it. I think to me what becomes really interest and weird is if Xabi Lanza doesn't think that like, okay, fine, whatever.
We'll walk us through Trent as a right wing back and we'll figure everything else out. Because now I'm starting to think, well, what's he thinking about doing? Like Real Madrid, you can kind of get away with playing Trent as the right center back slash right back in this system. With Valverde or Rodrigo as the right wing back.
Yeah, kinda like I could see you trying that. Conversely, Camavinga as the left center back slash midfielder again, sorta. You can see how that could work in somebody's mind. There are a lot of weird paths you can walk down if you're not doing the basic thing.
Because Jabbulanza thinks the basic thing is not the thing that I do or you don't have enough center backs or whatever. Yeah, I think that like because Valveria and Hellinga in particular are so rangy and such slightly odd fits for proper central midfield, you can kind of ask them to do the thing they do anywhere on the pitch and they emotionally do it, especially Benedict. That's how various skill is. You can plop him at like four or five different positions and he will do exactly the same things at each of those positions.
And it will be valuable for you in the positions where he's doing it. It's a very odd sort of thing. It's a castle flexibility that is like not Bernardo Silva. You can plot in a bunch of different positions on the pitch and he will do different things in those areas and each of those sets of things will be valuable.
Not like one of five best players might he be valuable, but like a good player. So he's kind of like three or four different kinds of good player. James Milner was like that. James Milner was three or four different kinds of good player.
Faye Delveria is just one kind of good player. But Somehow he can do it any. Yes, there's lots of pieces here that allow you to fit a bunch of different ideas together. And that's why I'm pretty hopeful about Xavi at Real Madrid.
I do think though that like, we are risking yada yada yada, ing the Mbappe Vinnie conundrum. Because the big thing that went wrong with Real Madrid this season more than anything else is that they brought in Kylian Mbappe to their front line and their attack did not get better. They brought in Kylian Mbappe and he and Vinni combined for about 0.7 goals, non penalty goals and assists per 90 over about like 55 90s. And that's good, but that's just not nearly as good as it should have been.
So the thing about this frrupt3 is that conceptually I can see a world where the front three as envisioned by Xabilonzo with the forward and two very narrow attackers works for Vinnie as the left sided attacker and Mbappe as the striker with, say, Bellingham being the advanced string puller Alla Florian Verts little different than the Verts. Little less forwardy, little more defensive production, blah, blah, blah. Fine, but like I could see it, right? Like I don't know that he does, but there's a lot of issue with the overall speaking of Mbappe and Vinny getting into each other's way on the left side.
And this is a, this is a system where Mbappe is a 9, but he doesn't have to do a lot of the central nine stuff. And so maybe it kind of just works. Yeah. The thing is that like what Bonaface did and what their other shik does, these are just zero touch strikers.
These are penalty box finishers. They got tons and tons of goals as penalty box finishers. Like that's not the Mbappe rule. No.
And he won't do that. He's got to go find the ball. But the problem generally speaking has been that both Mbappe and Bingo go find the ball at the same place and there's nothing in the box. Right.
And like they don't have enough for various reasons, basically of lack of ball progression. They don't have. They are able to get. They were able to get Rodrigo forward enough off the ball that he would then be in the box.
When those two guys were taking themselves, one of them was on the ball, one of them was taking themselves out of the game. You can see again with the narrator for three. However, that third one is would have an easier time and maybe that works. I think it's also possible that this doesn't work at all.
Right? Like, it's possible that you have Vinny and Bobby always on top of each other as they kind of are now in a more slightly more traditional way. And then the third guy who's kind of supposed to be the on ball creator is like, doesn't have multiple options because Vinini and Bobby are always in each other's way. And if Alonso sees that and wants to react in some way, like again, you have some options.
But things get weird. Like, can we see a world where Vinnie is the left wing back? And again you're playing like Trent as the right wing back. So it's more like Trent.
It's like a much more classic lopsided, you know, left wing, right wing situation. And then Mbappe is the left center forward and like Endrick gets a lot of minutes as the striker. Do we see something weirder where like Art Aguilera gets tons of minutes as one of the attackers with Vinny bumped out wide? Like there are options that get freaked.
I'm not sure any of them work, but there's like a lot of things you can try. Art Aguilera is a really fun talent. If they are really looking at playing some guys behind him. I'm like, one of the things that vert3 does is it puts a guy behind two strikers, only one of them with a striker.
Like that's what it does. Like that's how Florian Wirtz plays, right? Like he's a guy behind one striker, but he really has two guys to aim at because the left, the left version of Wirtz is also more restricted. And I just don't have any clear read on how much this Javi Alonso system is the core of what Javier Alonso is at all.
No, me neither. Because it fit the talented biological so perfectly. It's just as easy to tell a just so story how Javier Alonso wants to have a press that can win the ball, wants to have runners getting the penalty area from somewhere, wants to have ability to keep the ball and didn't have a high usage winger, didn't have a Vinnie or Mbappe or Rodrigo, and did have a great dribbling 10 and some other tennis counts and like, okay, I'll do all of that and then does he go somewhere else while I get the things I want in a totally different shape? Yeah.
And like there's like, there's a real chance. We just spent, you know, half an hour talking about this and then he just gets there and runs out a very Very classic. Four, three, three and one. That probably works.
You know what I mean? Like, like you just. There's. With Trent progressing the ball, there's just very.
There's like lots of room for just like a very like active defensive midfield. Like a very Liverpool 433 that you lack. You lack a little bit of like when I say very Liverpool 4 3, I think of like the classic Mane Firmino Salah iteration that you lack Firmino in the final third. Right.
You don't have a guy in the attacking third who can knit things together, but you have Drew Bellingham who is way ahead of whatever was in that functional Liverpool midfield those years. So like maybe Bellingham just steps up from the eight and gives you a lot of that in the final third. And the question is what does it look like if that team can't really compress the pitch? And so against bad teams they're looking more like 55 to 60% possession instead of 60 to 70% possession.
Against good teams they will regularly not have more of the ball. And all of those like teams you're describing, what they were able to do with that midfield was use it to get the ball and either progress it quickly or they could do like they were great at keep ball but they were fine at it. And like again two of many, these guys are okay at keep ball and knocking ball forward. Like you're doing something different if you're having to do this with say like dropping 10% possession of the other team every game.
Yeah, I mean the thing about that version of like 433 was that the main benefit of those midfielders, they were always there. They were always there. You couldn't counter attack through them because they were there. You needed to recycle the ball in possession.
They were there. They weren't playing dangerous passes. They weren't like transitioning through brilliant attacks. They were always there.
And I really do think you could build like a super sized version of that out of Bellingham Tameni and convenience. Like I really do. And then you'll tread on the wing as a ball progressor and like you come back to the same question. Mane Salah, Firmino worked together.
Can you get that out of Mbappe, Vinnie and I guess Rodrigo Valverde, whoever it is. And like kind of, I think not. But maybe because the midfield is so good that you can get more out of this, particularly Bellingham to balance like that's the. That to me is like the simplest guess.
Yes. And then what you do is it's a really big deal to get A really good defensive left back. Yeah, you have to get a really good defensive left back because you're just going to be under more pressure than you should be given all your talent. If you're not going to be at like 65% possession easily.
And so you're going to need like, you've got Rudiger and Asia and New Guy. You've got plenty making center backs. You get a really good defensive left back. You have in that midfield more than enough legs to cover for Trent.
And you just get really good at defending off the ball. Like, that's, to me, the way that this works. You have less of the ball, but you get guys who are really good at defending off the ball. And when you have the ball, you do have a real attacking plan.
And then you do have like a kill the game gear with this personnel is the thing. You're not going to be using the ball to create dangerous attacks very much. But like, if you're up 2:1 and 2:0 in the 55th minute, like you can like click into pass it around in the middle of the field mode without too much of a problem. That's sort of my vision for how this works best is you really go all in on quality individual and team defense in the back seven or like the back six.
And you also cover Trent. Yeah, I think that's probably right. I mean, that is like, if Jabe Alonso walks in with a blank slate, that is what I would assume he will do. And I think the interesting thing to think is like, okay, if he's not doing that, if he's doing something else, if it's a 3, 4, 3, if it's, you know, Trent in a weird position or one of the midfielders in a weird position, or Vinnie in a weird position.
What that does is give us a lens into Alonso's tactical thinking about what is the thing he is prioritizing here from which everything else then flows. Exactly. And as I said, what I'm really annoyed about here is there's actually a reason to watch the Club World Cup. Yeah, well, I am professionally obligated to be watching a lot of Club World cup, so I'm sorry.
And I think the other question, like, I have been sort of working on the presumption that no one can get this team to press, but could Xavier Alonso convince them that there are 10 games a season in which they're supposed to be part of a copyright press that we drill in practice and you learn how to do it even if you don't have to do it every night. I mean there's only two guys that really applies to. Right. Because rotary guy, you could just like drop for Valverde.
Yep. Like it's really just two guys. Oh yeah. Bellingham has run has played impressing systems before and he's good at it.
Yes. All of these guys could do it. The problem is two forwards who like you can kind of carry one forward that doesn't really press. In a pressing system it's fine.
Like Kane and Byron. That works fine. Your job is to job towards the keeper so he kicks the ball and starts everything off. Yeah.
Like you have to learn how to bend your runs and be in the right space. You have to work super hard. You just have to be a little smart enough. You just gotta be.
You just gotta be like odd enough to take away one passing too much of the song. Just awesome. Yeah. And is that just a baked in part of the swad.
That's a limitation that then Xavier's gonna be really creative to manage. Or is there some degree of. I'm Xavi Alonzo, I can get these guys to do something different. Reality dribble back me and try to push this.
I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical of that. Or like at what point in these guys careers do they start to think that they need to do a little bit more to win a little bit more? It's hard to believe that either.
If they want so much. That's the thing. Like it's loose. You guys are not gonna win without pressing.
Oh really? You wanna take a look at my last five years? We were talking about this in the discord. If you have a Patreon combined this or we talk about football, things like this.
There's actually a documentary about Luis Enrique at psg. There's a clip of him in the training room talking to Mbappe one on one in like full charismatic coach mode. Telling him that like you like Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan was a son of a bitch.
Michael Jordan would press it. Imagine if how. What a monster of a team we would be if you were leading the press and everyone was following you. And a bop is just like sitting there.
It's true. But like the other thing about Jordan is that like by the time he was Michael Jordan he would do that like you know, half a dozen games a year. Like he would get really mad that like the media was calling somebody else a really good player. So like he would decide he was gonna score tonight and then he picked him up like it was not a game and game out situation.
Exactly. That's My vision for, like, the way to force out the best is not that these guys become everyday pressers, like, seemingly Smite and Belly has their release and repeat, like, great work there, but that these guys are able to turn it on and the system works a few times a year. We'll see. All right, on that note, we'll be back later with more podcasts.
Cheers, y'. All. Cheers, y'. All.
It.