For Entertainment Purposes: 30 Dec 2024

To Whom It May Concern:

Juninho: This week of DT’s will likely be haphazard and at times half-baked compared to my usual standard. Sometimes life just happens. Sometimes you just don’t have that much free time. Nevertheless, it’s perfect timing since there aren’t many games + I pretty much can now write whatever I want. King ish…y’know?

Welcome to The Daily Merengue — a blog where you can feel free to discuss 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, Valyrian Steel, KungFuZizou, NeRObutBlanco, Felipejack, and Juninho (“GOAT”).

A Quick Word From M91

In football results matter most to those who have the biggest implications of the outcome, such as the President, Board of Directors, Coaches, and Players. If the results are below expectations for them then they will lose their jobs. Football is purely a results business for them.

On the flipside the one’s who aren’t in that bubble may not prioritise only the end outcome as it’s not a “life/death” scenario for them. For Television companies it’s important that the games are entertaining because it gives them higher ratings and as a result higher profit. For fans along with their team winning may also place the importance of being entertained. Watching football is a hobby and a way to get away from the daily toils of life.

Ultimately everybody wants their team to win but some stakeholders may have other preferences which they combine with results as part of their own personal fulfillment.

This was well-said by M91 and unfortunately, I don’t really have to the time to truly expound on this….Actually never mind — let’s expound on this:

A Long Word From Juni

Result or Entertainment. Quick Recap: A few days ago, I quickly poised the question “if results are all that matter, why do you watch the games?” and then as usual disappeared from MM for the day. I came back and saw the comment to an extent took a life of its own and has been dragged for a day or two so it’s about time for me to actually reply to my own semi-rhetorical question.

Minor Tweak to M91’s statement. M91 honestly has a pretty succinct comment about the preferences of significant stakeholders in the football business, and I believe the discussion has merit and for the most part is pretty apt. My only slight challenge is that I’m not entirely sure that results actually matter for the Presidents / Board of Directors for most clubs (besides bare minimums depending on clubs like avoid relegation for most). I’d be willing to argue that entertainment actually holds a much larger percentage of their priority pie chart than the comment suggests. To expand, we need to recall that a) football is first and foremost a product of the entertainment industry; b) football is a for-profit business; c) football club profits are predominantly attributed to TV / Broadcasting deals; and d) football winnings are actually a small percentage of stable annual revenue. Yes, we can likely make a convoluted (and albeit complex) argument that winning trophies assists club brands and then inspires healthy viewership which then further drives broadcasting licenses for the leagues, etc etc. However, I’d likely retort that in this digital age if every championship winning team played like Sean Dyche’s Burnley — profits would drastically decrease. Again, this is the entertainment industry. Football is competing for your weekend attention. Real Madrid does not only compete with the Premier League, but with Netflix, Apple Music, your local movie theater / park, your significant other, restaurants, etc etc etc. If the product you watch isn’t satisfactory, most viewers will simply do something else.

Now if you don’t fully believe me on this simple analysis for a much more complex issue (apologies, I really don’t have the time to dive dive into this), I believe it would behoove readers to not only review what may seem like innocuous rule changes to create more goals (e.g., Wenger’s offsides rule) but Florentino Perez’ language during the first iteration of the Super League. These are corporate execs understanding that entertainment is the only thing keeping this business afloat.

Actually real quick — here are some of Flo’s quotes:

“You have to make profitable income by producing more competitive games. When you have no income other than the broadcasting rights, you come up with a solution of producing more attractive games that enable fans from all over the world to watch the big clubs play against each other.”

“Football is beginning to lose interest, audiences are going down and television rights too, something had to be done, and the pandemic accelerated this process. Without change, we are ruined. 16-24 year old fans aren’t interested in football. 40% of young people aren’t interested in football, because there are too many games of low quality. It’s in all the statistics and the studies. Teenagers are more interested in playing video games than in football these days, and we have to do something to bring them back. We had to adapt.”

Your Attention. So again, I ask — why do you watch these games? Personally, I think we all hope for results but we actually watch for entertainment and entertainment alone. I believe I said this in a different DT (or many DTs) but for fans we’re simply watching TV or a movie. If the conclusion of a movie was all that ultimately mattered to us, the audience, we’d just fast-forward to the final 5 minutes + credits. We’d read the conclusion on the Wikipedia summary instead of sitting for 2hrs+ to see if Paul Atreidies really is the Lisan Al-Ghaib. In many ways, that’s football. Yes, I believe we all want to see Madrid win and we are willing to accept some horrible football to justify the ability to brag to our friends that Real has 15 CLs. But I’m unsure if we really sit through 90mins+ just to see a result.

We actually sit to watch a process that we hope concludes in a win. Otherwise, why not just check the results on an app?

— Juni

OK Quick Madrid News:

Don’t Trust AS. I wish Madrid news aggregators still took their time to post author reliability when it comes to transfer rumors but proper sourcing was lost a long time ago on MadridXtra / MadridZone and god forbid you actually read MadridUniversal. Anyway, don’t trust diaroAS for transfer rumors. They’ve been incredibly off on rumors for the better part of 1.5 to 3 years.

January Coming Soon. Similar to the Kylian Mbappe Winter 2023 saga, expect a lot of news to trickle in January regarding pre-contracts for TAA + Alphonso Davies. From a Juninho perspective, I’m pretty confident in TAA coming to Madrid (even English pundits seem to reluctantly accept that he’ll depart) but I’m about 60/40 on Davies. Idk why but I just have this feeling Davies really will stay loyal to Bayern and continue there for at least another 4-5 years (health permitting).

Back to Business. The season is really just about to begin.

Blue Suede for the Gang’nem || Peaces of Me.

“Let’s go — Got a MM house full of posts and it be like that. House full of pain and it be like that. Fell out of love and it be like that. Coral full of mods but it be like that. I done ran out of faith and it be like that. Disappeared many times and it be like that. Bled for the gang and it be like that, I died so many ways and it be like that —

It’s like — wait — grew around beef so long it’s like cake. Soon I bring God around we part ways. You done lost friends came up the same day. I done cut ends with ish that won’t change. I ain’t buy bait enough to fish and push P. Tryna stay self aware within me. Ran through MM streets so much my name clean. The only mod to give the mod DTs a new scene. I done checked off the lists of your MM dreams. Cats ain’t deserve the ish that I bring. Cats don’t earn the ash that I burn. Lil’ homie stand’ tall and be firm. It’s either us done with them or get served. Keep tryna unalign with ish that don’t work.”

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“King Juninho. Protect Your Piece”