Open Thread: January 1, 2022

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, Ezek Ix or NeRObutBlanco.

January schedule.

Carva and Bale are not training!

A recurrent theme is how Carvajal is now an injury prone player. He has not returned to the team after the Christmas break.

What can we say about Bale? We even put Bale as an option for tomorrow’s game in the poll, but it was too early. He is yet not training with the team.

Signing rumours

The realible source Fabrizio Romano brought two interesting information. First, he dismissed the links between Valverde and Manchester United. Fede is a part of Real’s strategy and he won’t leave. Second, Modric’s contract extension is a working progress. Real will extend his contract until 2023.

PSG is trying to sign Rudiger, but the player said he only wants Real Madrid. However, the salary offered by Real Madrid is not the reported €12m; it is around €8.5m and he wants a sign bonus of €20m, a similar value that Alaba received.

Benzema’s penalty record.