False Dawn? |4 December 2025

The Daily Merengue is a place where you can feel free to d 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, Ezek, Valyrian Steel, Felipejack, Juninho, NeRObutBlanco and yours truly, Kung_Fu_Zizou

Real Madrid looked like Xabi-ball against Bilbao. It wasn’t a perfect performance but it was exactly the type of performance we’ve been expecting the team to build on throughout the season.

Vinicius and Kylian combined well with each other and also allowed the fullbacks to be effective. Jude Bellingham was a boss all game long despite being overshadowed by Kylian’s brace and assist, he looked like himself, the player we signed from Dortmund.

The players took responsibility and did what was asked. The bare minimum expected of any team and it produced a good performance with a clean sheet and numerous chances for goals.

Xabi opted for a midfield without Arda Guler and it worked perfectly against Bilbao. This bodes well for the future as Xabi can have alternate approaches depending on the opponent. Whether Arda and Jude can co-exist? Well.. It does not look likely. It also remains to be seen whether we will need to have them work well together against certain teams that can stifle us.

Real Madrid have the best squad in La Liga. The team needs to keep going. We will concede chances. We’ve always conceded chances. How we react and carry on is what makes us Real Madrid. It’s still early but there’s no doubt about the potential of the team. We have to get a winning run going into the supercopa and find a way to break Atlético and Barcelona. We cannot be up and down all season. This season, winning isn’t everything but we have to play well at the very least. We did that against Bilbao and we won because if we play well, our quality will win 9 out of 10 games.