Open Thread: August 10, 2026

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 go swimming with: Valyrian Steel, Felipejack, Kung_Fu_Zizou (AKA KFZ), Juninho, Ezek and, of course… yours truly.

Jose & The Boyz have been playing some friendlies here and there, in an attempt to pick up some rhythm under the new leadership. This time, they faced Ferencvaros and came away with the win. Some notes by Nero:
* Arda was ..life: Very lively, showed some dribbling and passing range, connecting dots left right and center.
* Endrick was lively too. Effort was there and some good dribbling with some attempts at link-up.
* Defensive lapses… that drill-cross goal had no business happening, in spite of the out-of-form center backs being on at that stage… heck, they are the experienced ones.
* Loved the youngsters.
* Still have a long way to go, before being (somewhat) more comfortable against low blocks. I can see something brewing, at least.

…I’m not too convinced there’s that many available midfielders who would improve the team right now. I—like many others here—think it’s a profile thing: we need a controller. Somebody with the skill and tendency to control the tempo of the match, acting as an orchestrator of sorts. This will be especially useful when we wanna slow down play OR when the slow-down of play is being forced on us by low blocks. There are simply times when directness and speed are not viable options. A few names seem to still be flying around, like Wharton, Bouaddi, Smit… but nothing gaining too much traction as of now.

But hey, that’s mostly me. What do you think? Feeling confident about this team?