Open Thread: February 11, 2021

The Open Thread/Daily Merengue is a place where you can discuss anything and everything related to football. Feel free to discuss the topics presented here, or start your very own discussions! The Open thread will be posted every day by one of the mods: Valyrian Steel, Felipejack, YoSnail or Oscnar.

Happy Chinese New Year! (Officially on Friday)

Real Madrid has an entertaining video out featuring Lucas Vazquez and Luka Modric: “Happy Year of the Ox”

Training will resume this morning at 11:00 CET

https://www.realmadrid.com/en#

Los Blancos had Wednesday off to recover from the match against Getafe.

A new LaLiga Diaries is out

Real Madrid Feminino vs. Sevilla

Real Madrid’s women sit 4th in the division, one point behind Levante and Madrid CFF. Om Arvind reports on the injury situation and the squad for the match.

Pay a visit to the Las Blancas Podcast twitter page: https://twitter.com/las_blancas

And check out some deft moves from Maite Oroz:

Discussion: Will we see the 3-4-3 from Real Madrid again?

Juan Ignacio G-Ochoa of Marca examines the question.

With Ramos set to miss several weeks after his knee surgery, Zidane will have noticed how comfortable Varane looked playing alongside two other centre-backs.

In the past, Los Blancos have struggled when the captain is out, but that wasn’t the case on Tuesday night. The new system also helped to get the best out of Marcelo and that could pique Zidane’s interest too.

If the Frenchman were to use this system again over the next few weeks, after a few of his starters have returned, it would probably look more like a 3-5-2 and look like this: Thibaut Courtois; Nacho, Raphael Varane, Ferland Mendy; Dani Carvajal, Luka Modric, Casemiro, Toni Kroos, Marcelo; Marco Asensio, Karim Benzema.

About that physical battle between Mendy and Kubo

The one that left both players on the turf. M.A.J. points out that the two were hugging after the match: