Football changes faster than life. The vital generations are divided into periods of 15 or 20 years: baby boomers (between 1946 and 1964), Generation X (1965-1979), millennials (1980-1999), Generation Z (since 2000).. Football, however, threatens to collapse every summer if a team's results are not adequate.. Perhaps that is why, because of such constant and overwhelming success, Real Madrid's last midfield has been so long-lived in terms of time and titles.. Casemiro, Kroos and Modric, “The Bermuda Triangle”, as Carlo Ancelotti defined them, or “The Holy Trinity”, as social networks had previously called them, have made it almost impossible for their heirs to match their historical legacy.. It sounds crazy. But in its generational reconstruction, far from going through a long journey through the desert, Madrid has managed to build the midfield of the “new football” while still applauding the decline of its legends. Tchouaméni (23 years old), Camavinga (20), Valverde (25) and Bellingham (20) are young, they are complete, they are different and, despite the competition and egos that the ball provokes, they have been friends since they met in Valdebebas.
Between the summer of 2015, when Casemiro, Kroos and Modric met for the first time in a locker room, until this July 2023 in which Tchouaméni, Camavinga, Valverde and Bellingham saw each other for the first time, only eight years have passed, life has barely changed, but football, the one that exalted the Brazilian, the German and the Croatian, is now different. Footballers are now a kind of cyborgs, capable of defending, attacking, passing, recovering, distributing, scoring…. They have good physique, but also good touch on the ball. Its size is not at odds with extraordinary technical quality.
“Case, Toni and Luka were specialists, almost artisans of football. These are different,” say the voices closest to the Madrid locker room.. It was a perfect triangle with very defined roles, something that Ancelotti's new rhombus has not yet decided.. The arrival of Bellingham has forced the Italian to change his scheme and recover the four midfielders who made him so happy in Milan. Tchouaméni has taken over the axis, Camavinga is trying to find his place inside, Valverde wants space on the right and Jude seems to have been born to play at the top of the structure, accumulating six goals in six games.
“A clean locker room”
Their positions, however, are not fixed.. Carletto constantly asks them for mobility to generate spaces and superiorities in the peaks of the large area. Madrid is generating more there, with the full-backs as the main weapons of its attack. Camavinga can appear at the base if Tchouaméni advances his position and suddenly approaches Valverde and Bellingham to build walls. The Uruguayan is different. He prefers to give Carvajal and Lucas meters to take advantage of their run into space or directly break lines from behind with the ball.. It is more powerful than technical, although it defends itself. Bellingham, for its part, is free verse, almost like Rodrygo. Both are waiting for Vinicius to complete an offensive that needs to be understood beyond football and tactics.
“If we know each other well off the field, everything will be easier on the field,” Camavinga explained this week.. And so they are doing it. On Sunday, August 27, just after beating Celta in Vigo and taking advantage of the two days off that Ancelotti had given them before traveling with their national teams, the young people went on a getaway to Saint-Tropez. There were Tchouaméni, Camavinga, Bellingham, Rodrygo and Mendy, accompanied by their circle of trust. Vinicius was missing (“they left me at home,” joked the Brazilian, injured in Balaídos) and Valverde, but the trip served to unite even more a locker room that they define from within as “clean, without egos”. “The healthiest I have been in years,” Ancelotti acknowledged.
Chemistry in the locker room
And think about it for a moment.. Madrid could pay 130 million for Bellingham, already indisputable in a midfield that still has Kroos and Modric and where in recent years Valverde (who played for Castilla), Tchouaméni for 80 million and Camavinga have arrived. for 30. The numbers and competition could generate egos, bad feelings or envy, even more so in a team like Madrid, but for now, the locker room is the opposite: “Chemistry,” they say.
The players' environment jokes with the language of conversations. A mix between French, English and Spanish. Tchouaméni, whose mother is a Spanish teacher, is fluent in the language, like Camavinga, who already spoke it in her first months in Madrid. They both have no problems with English. And Bellingham, who is not separated from them in the sports city, is already able to understand and say a few words in Spanish. Rodrygo, Vinicius and Valverde, who when they arrived did not say a single sentence, little by little they are loosening up.
There is a connection and they show it on networks, where they support each other after the games. “Brother”, “machine”, “bomb”, “MVP”… Young people do not miss every Instagram post from their generation mates. Sometimes a veteran like Kroos, Rüdiger or Lucas may appear, but La Quinta de Belli, because that is what they call Bellingham in Valdebebas, connects like today's youth connects: travel and social networks. “They are inseparable.” And consequently: football.