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This article is part of Football FanCast’s Opinion series, which provides analysis, insight and opinion on any issue within the beautiful game, from Paul Pogba’s haircuts to League Two relegation battles…

Real Madrid have an extremely talented squad on their hands.

After all, the average age of their team stands at 26.6 years old, which suggests there is a decent blend of youth and experience in the squad.

But a problem that is often present with big teams such as Real Madrid is that not everyone can get a chance they deserve, and sometimes that means being completely frozen out of the squad.

Such a thing is currently happening to the 26-year-old Mariano Diaz, a product of Real Madrid’s youth academy, Castilla.

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Diaz was a huge prospect in his youth days prior to his big step up to the senior team in 2016.

Back then, he spent 32 games playing for Real Madrid C, scoring an impressive 16 goals and assisting two in the process. This incredible trend continued and, more importantly, improved upon his rise into the B team as he netted 32 goals and added one assist in just 43 games for the Castilla.

Needless to say, his eventual call-up to the seniors was expected and inevitable.

But ever since that moment in 2016, things gradually turned sour until he was transferred to Lyon the year after that.

Still, Diaz managed to prove Los Blancos wrong and continued impressing in France, recording 21 goals and six assists in 48 appearances for his new team.

Watch Lionel Messi and Gareth Bale answer the internet’s weirdest questions in the video below…

Surprisingly, Florentino Perez seemed convinced and the now 26-year-old was brought back to the Spanish capital in the summer of 2018.

And we’re yet to see him play ever since that moment.

More than ten games in, Diaz has hardly had a sniff of the squad, almost never being called-up and only gracing the bench when he was.

In retrospect, his transfer back to Real Madrid seems quite bizarre for that very reason and we still don’t know why it is that Zidane decided to keep the forward in the pipeline without giving him a proper shot.

Of course, since their squad is full of superstars like Karim Benzema, Eden Hazard, Gareth Bale and Luka Jovic, it’s not surprising that a player like Diaz is struggling for minutes.

But if that’s the case and Real Madrid knew he was not going to play much, if at all, why snatch him away from Lyon in the first place?

As things currently stand, that decision might hurt both them and the player in question.

We’ll have to wait and see if his fortune changes for the better but if the season so far has been any indication, that is highly unlikely.

In a disappointing display on Friday night, England slipped to a surprising 2-1 defeat away to the Czech Republic in EURO 2020 qualifying action.

Gareth Southgate’s men took an early lead through a Harry Kane penalty, but from then on, it was the home side that dominated proceedings. By the end of the match, the Czech Republic had fired off 17 shots on goal, compared to the Three Lions’ paltry seven.

One man who had a particularly poor outing was Everton’s Michael Keane, with the centre-back seemingly at fault for the equaliser. As well as that error, the 26-year-old lost possession 15 times over the course of the game – the joint-second highest of any England player on the pitch.

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After seeing his display, England fans flooded to Twitter to vent their frustrations with the Toffees defender.

Many Three Lions supporters slammed his performance, and one in particular simply labelled him as “utter garbage”.

Some fans insisted Keane should be nowhere near the England set-up, and questioned how Southgate could even consider him to be a starting calibre centre-back.

Check out some of the reaction of England fans below:

#Mbappe2020 is trending on Twitter after Liverpool fans added two and two together and managed to make 180.

That’s £180m in case you were wondering, Kylian Mbappe’s Transfermarkt valuation, as Reds fans are convinced the PSG superstar is going to arrive next summer as part of their potential deal with Nike.

This comes after the news that the club have won their court battle against New Balance, via The Guardian.

New Balance were fighting for the right to continue making Liverpool’s kits from the summer of 2020, when their current deal ends, and the Reds are now expected to switch over to a £30m per year deal with Nike.

Of course, Nike bring an added element of star power, marketing brilliance and a wide array of partnered athletes, one of which is Mbappe, and Reds fans are flooding Twitter believing that the potential deal with Nike will bring the wonderkid to Anfield, because that’s how transfers work, right?

The World Cup winner has a ridiculous 106 senior goals for club and country at the tender of age of just 20.

Take a look at some of the best Twitter reactions down below, where even BT Sport have jumped on the bandwagon…

In our latest instalment of theÂFlashbackÂseries, we take a look back at a certain moment and look at how things might have changed those initial reactions.

When Chelsea signed N’Golo Kante from Leicester City for a transfer fee believed to be in the region of £30m in the summer of 2016, many would have felt it was a steal at the time, however the France international has continued to impress and star in the middle of the Blues’ side.

Having impressed for the Foxes in his one season at the King Power Stadium with figures of 4.7 tackles, 4.2 interceptions and 1.5 clearances in the 37 games he played on their way to the Premier League title (per WhoScored), it was, perhaps, quite understandable as to why those in SW6 were extremely excited about what they were getting.

Here are just some of the reactions those fans had at the time…

The defensive midfielder has become a star for the Blues as he enters the fourth year of his Stamford Bridge tenure and he has continued to show his importance and significance to Frank Lampard’s side with his recent performances – something the manager highlighted following the defeat to Liverpool in the Super Cup.

As quoted byÂThe London Evening Standard, he said: “Kante is an amazing player, amazing character. He’s a machine on the football field. He hasn’t trained much, had a swollen ankle two days ago, but he was desperate to play and you saw what he gave to the team today. He will be hugely important. I am delighted to work with him.â€

Indeed, he stepped up against Liverpool once again in their most recent encounter in the Premier League, whereby he scored the Blues’ only goal of the game and appeared to have a stormer of a game – WhoScored gave him a 7.76 match rating, which was the best of anyone involved in the match.

There is no doubting that Kante is crucial to Chelsea and, arguably, has become the club’s most important player following Eden Hazard’s summer departure to Real Madrid, although, admittedly, the duo offer different things on the pitch.

The France World Cup winner has seen his game go up another level with each year that passes (taking just the Premier League competition into consideration). In 2016/17, the 28-year-old managed to achieve an average of 3.6 tackles, 2.4 interceptions and 1.2 clearances every game he was involved in.

2017/18 saw Kante produce an incredible 3.3 tackles, 2.5 interceptions and 0.8 clearances in the 34 outings he had in Antonio Conte’s final year in charge of the SW6 outfit.

In 2018/19, he managed to record an average of 2.1 tackles per match in his 36 Premier League appearances last season, as well as 1.2 interceptions, although he was largely played out of position under Maurizio Sarri.

Indeed, there have been comparisons between him and compatriot Claude Makelele and it would not be hard to suggest those are warranted, despite Football BH claiming it ‘lazy’ whilst the ex-Blue did not agree with them either (Reuters via the Independent).

The former Chelsea man managed to achieve an exceptional success rate of 82% when making a tackle when in Premier League action, making 55 interceptions and providing the Blues with 99 clearances whilst he never made an error that led to a goal being scored (official Premier League website).

Chelsea, essentially, stole Kante away from Leicester for £30m, however he has continued to show just how important of a player he is to the Stamford Bridge outfit and it turned out to be a very clever piece of business by Marina Granovskaia, Roman Abramovich and co.

Chelsea fans, how important has Kante become since signing from Leicester? Let us know your thoughts by sharing them in the comments section below!

When does a loss of form become something more substantial? Perhaps even something definitive? At what point is a temporary malaise no longer put forward as a valid reason to explain why a player isn’t as good as he used to be? Instead it’s simply acknowledged and accepted that the player isn’t as good as he used to be.Whatever the answer is to that rather gloomy thought it’s hard to shake off the feeling that Tottenham’s Dele Alli and Manchester United’s Jesse Lingard are slowly and inexorably revealing it to us by virtue of being shadows of their former selves over a long duration of time. They’re case studies in a way.Indeed, so long have they each been off the boil and ineffective to the point of being anonymous that it’s difficult to determine exactly when their downward trajectories began while recalling the days of them running the show in north London and at Old Trafford induces only nostalgia.Watch Tottenham Hotspur Live Streams With StreamFootball.tv Below

With Alli it’s possible to pinpoint the 2017/18 season as the start of his decline though precisely when is shrouded in debate. All we do know is that the attacking midfielder who emerged so complete and brilliant that he won back-to-back Young Player of the Year awards suffered a sustained dip to his usual high standards that year. His stats were down though still impressive. Teammates such as Son Heung-min and Christian Eriksen began to overtake him in prominence.

Underwhelming outings for England during that summer’s World Cup saw his reputation dwindleÂand then the following campaign for Spurs brought injury after injury. A total of 22 games were missed last season due to thigh and hamstring problems. So poor was he in the other fixtures it’s hard to work out which games they were.

When Alli was hauled off against Bayern in Tottenham’s recent 7-2 disaster nobody batted an eyelid. Despite his fall from grace, he is still valued at £81m by Transfermarkt, but it would take a genuine masterclass from Daniel Levy to attract that type of offer for him given his current form.

With Lingard, his diminishing as a creative force was more of a creeper. When the staggering statistic emerged earlier this season that the 26-year-old hadn’t scored or made a single assist in 2019 – he has since at least added one assist to his name carving out a goal against Rochdale in the EFL Cup – people responded in the same manner as when a rather obvious twist is revealed in a film. They knew it. This whole time they knew it. They just didn’t articulate it for fear of ruining the surprise for others, that’s all.

Yet as Duncan Alexander illustrated in the damning tweet below, Lingard’s woes go back much further, hidden only by a successful December of last year.

In recent times he has been dropped by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer – and this despite United being entrenched in crisis and requiring every drop of experience right now – and on his return against Arsenal he was so insipid a local newspaper deemed him ‘invisible’ and a ‘liability’.

In recent times too Lingard – valued by Transfermarkt at a fee surely beyond his current worth at £36m – has found himself excluded from the England set-up and it’s apt and pertinent that the other player left out this week of Gareth Southgate’s squad was Alli. Their omissions were a surprise given how highly the coach rates them. Their omissions, to the general public, were long overdue.

When does a loss of form become something more substantial? With every passing week with this pair we’re beginning to find out.

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Chronicle Live wrote on Friday about the relationship between Newcastle ace Miguel Almiron and Atlanta United goal machine Josef Martinez, so should the Magpies move for Martinez?

What’s the story?

As reported by Chronicle Live, Atlanta United striker Martinez is well and truly missing his partner in crime.

Martinez and Almiron tore MLS apart last season as Atlanta won their first championship, but Almiron joined Newcastle in January for a club-record fee of about £20m.

Martinez then signed a new contract with the American club, but celebrated his first goal of the season this week with the iconic celebration that he and Almiron shared.

The aforementioned report speaks very highly of the relationship between the two South American players, so should Newcastle use it to their advantage and try to sign Martinez?

Goalscoring machine

While there’s no doubt Almiron was a shining star in Atlanta United’s side last season, his stats are child’s play compared to those of his teammate.

Martinez scored a frankly ridiculous 35 goals in 39 appearances last year, taking his total during his time in Atlanta to 57 goals in 63 showings.

He scored three hat-tricks last campaign, and his pace, agility, low centre of gravity and feisty nature would appear to make him a perfect fit for the Premier League.

Rafael Benitez clearly wants to keep Salomon Rondon on Tyneside, but outside of the Venezuelan international the gaffer has very little to choose from up front. Rondon and Martinez have also played together at international level, so there is yet another connection to Tyneside.

Valued at £9m by Transfermarkt and having just signed a new contract, a summer move would not be cheap, but it would add yet another weapon to Benitez’s attacking ranks, which are slowly but surely catching up with the quality on offer in defence.

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Just the other night, we witnessed FIFA’s The Best award ceremony as the footballing world chose the best players on the planet once again.

Lionel Messi was the one crowned the victor at the end of the night but among other awards that were given out, FIFA also chose the Best XI of the 2018/19 season.

And as it turned out, Real Madrid had a total of four players in the lineup as Marcelo, Eden Hazard, Sergio Ramos and Luka Modric found their names on the sheet. Barca had Messi and Frenkie De Jong in the XI.

Watch Spanish Football Live Streams With StreamFootball.tv Below

Naturally, as is the case with many of these awards, a number of Barcelona fans were simply fuming at that decision to recognise so many Los Blancos stars.

Many of them seem to think that a number of those players did not deserve their place and most of the hate was directed at Ramos, Marcelo and Modric in particular.

Some were even quick to call out Florentino Perez’s involvement in the whole ceremony and FIFA’s corruption.

You can see many of their replies down in the collection of tweets below:

Fulham youngster Fabio Carvalho could still join Liverpool in the summer transfer window, with the midfielder desperate to work alongside Jurgen Klopp.

The Lowdown: Liverpool miss out on January move for Carvalho

The 19-year-old looked set to move to the Reds in the dying hours of deadline day but the transfer failed to be completed in time. That was due to the Football League not having deal sheets for a loan-back agreement to be sorted, causing frustration at the 11th hour.

However, it appears as though all hope is not lost regarding the possibility of Carvalho heading to Anfield.

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The Latest: Pearce makes positive Carvalho claim

According to journalist James Pearce on Twitter, a summer move is still on the cards, with the player himself very eager to work with Klopp.

The journalist tweeted: “Not the end of the world. Wouldn’t have arrived at #LFC until the summer anyway. Still a good chance he moves to #LFC in July. Player very keen on the chance to work with Klopp.”

Pearce subsequently added: “The two clubs could agree that the fee they belatedly agreed today will now be the compensation this summer when Carvalho is out of contract. That would mean a tribunal isn’t required. Either way the player wants to join LFC.”

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The Verdict: Snap him up, Reds

While it may initially have seemed a killer blow when the deal collapsed on Monday night, there does seem to be a genuine chance that Carvalho still becomes a Liverpool player, which is a huge positive.

The teenager looks like a player of immense potential, not only scoring seven goals in 15 Championship starts for Fulham this season but also registering three assists.

Carvalho has been compared to both Philippe Coutinho and Jude Bellingham in terms of his playing style, which speaks volumes about the impact he could make at Liverpool if the Reds can grant him his wish of working under Klopp.

In other news, some Liverpool fans have reacted to a positive Reds update. Read more here.

Tottenham Hotspur will be looking to make it three wins on the bounce when they host Newcastle United in the Premier League as the race for the top four hots up.

The Lilywhites could not only go three points clear of Manchester United, who are sat in sixth, after their slip-up against Leicester City on Saturday night but they would also put the pressure on their fourth-placed arch-rivals, Arsenal, before their clash with Crystal Palace on Monday night.

However, the Magpies will be no easy task as Eddie Howe has transformed their fortunes at St James’ Park since taking the helm – three wins in their last five outings have seen them move clear of the relegation zone.

Antonio Conte is facing a few injury problems heading into kick-off at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, so it will be interesting to see what sort of side he can name this afternoon.

Here’s the XI we’re predicting…

There could be just one change from the side that defeated West Ham 3-1 before the international break.

Sergio Reguilon is doubtful for this encounter, and with Ryan Sessegnon currently absent through injury, it leaves the Italian head coach light on options at left wing-back.

Without the pair, it hands him only two options.

He can either revert to a back four with Ben Davies returning to his natural left-back role, or he could switch Matt Doherty to the other flank and reintroduce Emerson Royal on the right.

It’s the latter that seems more plausible, so the £26m Brazilian defender returns to the team, playing alongside the Irishman, Davies, Eric Dier and Cristian Romero, in front of skipper Hugo Lloris.

Emerson, 23, has not been in the best of form since arriving from Barcelona in the summer, with his performances being described as “terrible” and “horrendous” on occasions.

The midfield remains unaltered, with Oliver Skipp also still missing, so Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Rodrigo Bentancur continue in tandem.

Further forward, the electric trio of Heung-min Son, Dejan Kulusevksi and England talisman Harry Kane will look to continue their fine form together, even despite the big dilemma surrounding Steven Bergwijn.

It’s hard to ignore the Dutchman’s form for his national side this week, scoring three times, twice in the win over Hojbjerg’s Denmark and once in the draw with Germany.

But given the form of the aforementioned unit, Bergwijn may still have to wait for a chance to impress domestically.

AND in other news, Conte handed big injury boost ahead of Newcastle clash…

Club-record signing Daniel James delivered his worst performance in a Leeds United shirt as the Yorkshire giants were beaten by a struggling Newcastle United side at Elland Road on Saturday afternoon.

Having cost a whopping £30m from Manchester United in the summer, the Wales international – who had long been a target of manager Marcelo Bielsa, having gone close to signing him for a third of the price in January 2019 – has struggled to make his mark at Elland Road.

And Saturday’s disaster was another reminder that he’s just not been good enough.

Jonjo Shelvey fired in a 20-yard freekick to seal a 1-0 victory for the Magpies after Javier Manquillo was brought down on the edge of the box in the 75th minute.

Perhaps goalkeeper Illan Meslier could have done better with it seeing as it flew in on his side of the goal but by no means was he at fault for their overall display.

Toothless in the final third yet again, Leeds have been pulled back into the relegation mire and now sit just seven points above the bottom three, with a couple of sides below them holding games in hand.

Bielsa was once again without his star striker Patrick Bamford, leaving James to play upfront on his own.

In 71 minutes of action, the 5 foot 7 dynamo registered only 15 touches of the ball, comfortably the fewest of any starter on the pitch for either side. For further context, Meslier managed 39 touches, whilst visiting striker Chris Wood had 50 touches, as per SofaScore.

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It shows how the former United man was more involved in the game than James, despite playing the same role.

With those few touches, the Welshman managed only four accurate passes from nine attempts (44%), which would have done last weekend’s hat-trick hero Jack Harrison, top goalscorer Raphinha and others no favours whatsoever in the attack.

Whilst he also won just one of his six duels (16.6%), lost possession with nearly 50% of his touches (seven times) and to make matters worse, he fluffed two big chances – so despite barely being involved, he could’ve been the man to win it for Leeds.

LeedsLive reporter Beren Cross graded the £16.2m-rated star amongst the worst performers in his post-match ratings column and highlighted how ineffective he was at leading the line for Bielsa.

Indeed, in the past, James has been lambasted as “headless” with his decision making in the final third, so it’s a really baffling decision to see him trusted as a centre-forward, especially over someone like Rodrigo, who has bundles of experience playing that very role over in Spain.

Not only did he badly fail Bielsa on Saturday afternoon but also the Yorkshire outfit as a whole. Once again, the £52k-per-week-earning 24-year-old was a sheer disappointment and he ought to have no place in the starting XI going forward.

AND in other news, Leeds suffer transfer blow over “playmaker” who “Bielsa really wants”, he’ll be livid…