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 you’d totally celebrate IRL with: Valyrian Steel, Felipejack, Kung_Fu_Zizou (AKA KFZ), Juninho and, of course... yours truly.

Officially the Best on Earth

Real Madrid beat Al-Hilal in what was a goalfest of a game, to claim the Club World Cup trophy. For me at least, there are both positives and negatives to take away from the game. First of all, a trophy win is a very welcome mental boost ahead of a very hard and draining stretch of games. Second, the goals scored is a positive sign, given some recent struggles in front of goals. This is even greater news when you look at the scorers.

Still, some of the obvious things were anything but positive. For starters, Los Blancos may have scored 5, but they conceded 3... With all due respect to Al-Hilal who put up a fight, Real have to do better in defense, because they looked insanely shaky. We made Luciano Vietto look like an unstoppable force. Here’s a comment I particularilly liked:

Prime Ronaldo has finally come off

-AllGoodNamesRGone

Another thing I noticed was the ...suspect choices made during attacking sequences in the closing stages of the game, with Al-Hilal pressuring for a couple more goals to tie the match (which never happened). Vini, Rodrygo and ...heck, even Alaba, were trying to (over)dribble into troops of players:

Is this FIFA Street...

-Nero

just looks like it, everyone is dribbling

-TR Madridista

Some other actions were questionable as well

Of course Asensio would try a rocket from far out when he could have recycled possession and close the effing game out.

- Nero

Enjoy

I don’t know about you guys, but I say: “Let’s enjoy watching these guys while they’re still here’ (though I understand that it may not be easy every game).