Great initiative.

Great Initiative and thanks to you & Gaelle for giving us the oppurtunity to feature on the podcast. We all loved the conversation. Great learning experience. Two thumbs up!

Thank you guys! Apakshit, you want to be on in one of the upcoming sessions? Ashay, it was a pleasure! And I learnt a lot, I took notes and everything! :-)

Awesome stuff Gaëlle and company! Great work for the first try, but if I could offer a suggestion for future podcasts: Gaëlle you should introduce yourself/madridismo.org at the beginning and sign off with the same.

I spent the whole time listening to this talking along and voicing my opinion like I was listening to conservative talk radio, with the difference being that I wasn't disagreeing with 95% of what you all said. Loved the pronunciation lesson for Varane!

If I had one thing to add, and it might be something I write about in-depth in the future: I doubt we will ever see Higuaín and Benzema both starting in a first choice line-up. Long story short: It would demolish the fragile balance of the team, not because of Karim and Gonzalo necessarily, but just it would require a major formation change to work without disaster and Mourinho is not keen on changing course mid-voyage.

Sure, I would love to participate in it.

I agree with Aaron about Benzema & Higuain playing together. It does call for a complete change of the team dynamics, which I'm sure Mourinho would not like to implement, at least not in this season. If they do play together, It'd most likely be as part of the front trident in a 4-3-3.

However, if Mourinho does hang on for yet another season, I think it is entirely possible that he'll experiment more. We have the players to play a 4-4-2 but it ain't gonna happen this season at least.

Excuse us for the pronunciations. European / Latin names tend to get quite difficult for us Indians due to the R's lol

Oh and Gaelle, I just recalled where I read that Granero has done a major on psychology. It's on the club's site under the player's bio ("Personal" section).

Ashay,
Your contribution more than makes up for any pronunciation issues! Up until now I just called him Va-rain since I never stopped to think about it. With all the English commentary I am subject to it is a miracle I don't call our left back marchello.

As for 4-3-3, I think you are spot on in predicting that as the most likely, Mou has in fact toyed with that sort of a formation already but it has not included Benz+Pipita. Truthfully I am undecided on how Benzema would play as a wide forward. He has all the qualities to be tremendous but for some reason I could see him struggling out there... while it would be disastrous IMHO to put Gonzalo out wide. Now I think I am going to have to write that article...

Whoah, what did Juampi do to the comments!? Aaron, yeah we'll add an intro and ending and we'll have to get you on too next time. :>

Aaron: - ROFL imagining you commenting while listening! Are you dropping a hint here??!! ;-) I get it, and I think it would be great!
- Yeah, I should definitely introduce myself and madridismo.org, I've been told that on Twitter too. I didn't realize...it seems basic and yet I didn't think about it at all. Oh well...
- I'm glad we sorted out the "Varane" pronunciation issue! It was about time! LOL
- How is that article coming along? ;-)

Ashay: - Please don't apologize for the pronunciation. Do you remember I had to ask you how to pronounce yours and Tanuj's name? And I also have my own peculiar pronunciation of Özil, where I desperately try to take advantage of my basic knowledge of German (the funny thing is, since his name is Turkish, I might not even be pronouncing it right! Oh well...!)
- Ok, so bedtime reading --> the players' bios! LOL