We Still Don’t Trust You: 29 April 2024

“This run is personal.” — Juninho

“I can find a million Juninho clones all around MM. (Mhmm — yes) I don’t think there’s any moderator that has influenced MM culture and Daily Threads more than Juninho over the last decade. (I agree. I agree) I think Juninho has INFLUENCE. (Absolutely) MMers want to BE Juninho. MMers wanna SOUND like Jose Juninho. it’s wild to me that we don’t recognize…y’know there’s not a Big 5…there’s not Kiyan + Lucas + Matt…there’s not a Coral…there’s just him.” — Valryian Steel & KungFuZizou

Welcome to The Daily Merengue — a place where you can feel free to discuss all things football. Do not be alarmed by the overt RMCF bias. It’s in the name!

Shoutout to the Mods who do a fantastic job, Valyrian Steel, KungFuZizou, NeRObutBlanco, Felipejack, and Juninho (the “GOAT”)

We Still Don’t Trust You

“And it hurt me to say it….It really hurts me to say it.” — Juninho

Arda Guler is talented…but we may be slightly overreacting to his playing time and accomplishments. I still don’t understand the fuss over Arda Guler’s playing time this past season or some of our talent evaluations surrounding him. First tackling his minutes, yes, I understand that Arda Guler has only played 167 mins this season (which after typing does feel incredibly low), however, contextually it makes sense. Arda missed the entirety of preseason and the first half of the regular season due to injury. He then first featured against Arandina in the CDR for 59 mins in the Third Round. As we know, the CDR is usually the bread and butter for most young talents to get valuable playing time, and we were quickly dismissed from the competition in the Round of 16 by Atletico Madrid. Could Arda have featured more in our La Liga run? Maybe? If you actually evaluate our La Liga matches, we have only won 4 out of the last 15 matches by 2+ goals (and one of those games we didn’t have a 2 goal lead until the 79th minute). This doesn’t leave an incredible amount of room to usher Arda into a “comfortable” environment. This also doesn’t really discuss whether Joselu / Brahim / Ceballos / Modric deserved those minutes ahead of Arda. I’ll admit that Arda should probably be heavily featured going forward but up until now…idk if that’s really where we should hang our hat on.

I’m also extremely worried about whether Arda actually has a place at Madrid or whether he is just another Madrid vanity purchase due to Barcelona interest. If we continue to play a 4-4-2 next season and Mbappe and Endrick join, Rodrygo is going to have issue getting minutes. I seriously don’t understand where Arda (or insert your favorite Musiala / Wirtz rumor…trust me we’ll get there later this week) fit in. If we play a 4-3-3, maybe but seriously he probably needs to get loaned. And we know how that goes for our creative players (e.g., Odegaard / Kubo).

Now regarding Arda’s talent and our evaluations. Yes, he is talented but we also should be cautious / patient towards our hyperbole and acclaim. And honestly, this is a comment for every young talent (i.e., Endrick). At age 18/19, Ansu Fati was the next Messi. At age 18/19, Dani Ceballos had 2,000+ minutes for Real Betis. Just a few months ago Nico Paz was the flavor of the MM blog, and now no one seems to remember his name. There’s countless of Arda Gulers in epoch of Football History. Let’s actually allow these kids to grow up before crowning them the next new thing.

Football Heritage

“if you ain’t down with the gang…you get crossed out”

Just one more nights sleep until a football heritage clash in the Champions League. Although Bayern is going through absolute turmoil, anything is possible in the CL. I’m praying we just jump to a lead and end this tie in the first leg…but of course we’ll likely suffer. Get hyped. Glory is within our reach.

I’m On A Overload (feat. Judinho Bellingham)

“Hop on a Lear, then we go up. Money in the bag, don’t fold up. All around the globe, they know us. Everywhere we go, got it sewed up. Thousand and one hitters when we roll up”

This is for Ivatar.

Final Thoughts

“You gotta understand there’s a difference between love and loyalty. Judas loved Jesus. Brutus loved Caesar. VC loved MM.”

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I didn’t have time for my diatribe on this. But trust me, I will make time shortly…but for now