Real Madrid's two superstars, Vinicius Junior and Kylian Mbappé, were occupying the exact same space against Atletico Madrid in their loss on Sunday, it was revealed by L'Equipe.
It is not uncommon for Real Madrid fans to recognise that Vinicius Junior and Mbappé occupy very similar spaces on the pitch.
Obviously, when Mbappé plays as a striker, he usually plays more centrally, but even then, he drifts off to the left many times during the match. However, against Atletico Madrid, it was totally different.
For some reason, both of them were playing on the left with essentially no presence inside the box at all times. It was the extreme version of what Real Madrid fans have been talking about for the last two years, and it probably became a tipping point for them.
They were in such similar positions that the graph that showed average positions for every player only showed 10 players because Mbappé's circle was literally overlapping Vinicius Jr.'s circle, which is just ridiculous.
Why not just play Endrick or Carlos Espi instead of Vinicius Junior?
It goes back to the same problem that fans had about the El Helico game: if you knew that you're not going to have a striker in the middle, why not just play someone like Endrick on the right instead of Arda Guler? Or instead of Vinicius Junior?
Why not bring on Carlos Espí and put in balls from the left? What was the point of starting Vinicius Junior when Mbappé was going to be occupying the same spaces?
Atletico played very defensively on that side because they knew most of Real Madrid's attacks were going to come from that side, which is why the impact that the two of them had was minimal. Real Madrid did not see anything from either of them, and it just made starting both of them in that game useless.
Vinicius Junior wasn't really in good form, so he could have been dropped for someone like Endrick or Espi to be in the box. If Mbappé was going to be playing on the left anyway, it didn't really make sense for him to appear as the striker.
There was so much wrong with the game against Atletico Madrid that you could probably write an entire book about it. Thankfully, the game is over, and Real Madrid can now focus on the rest of the season and hope that this issue does not arise again.
If Mourinho actively wanted this to happen, then that's on him. It might just be his fault because this is the first time it's happened this season. We will never know, and it could just as well be the fault of the two players, but if it happens again, it is definitely, for some reason, intentional.
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