AFPJose Mourinho is set to work with his full squad for the first time, with Real Madrid's ranks completed during pre-season for the new campaign.
Big names are not what Real Madrid lack. What they need is a way to strike the right balance between them on the pitch.
Now that the squad is complete, Mourinho faces a delicate test: how to field an attacking line of four world-class players without losing the balance needed to compete for titles.
According to an AS report, "Mourinho began working with a full Real Madrid squad, after some players had been absent from him during the preparation phase. The attacking quartet comprises Yan Diomande, Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior, with Jude Bellingham behind them in the playmaker role.
Transfermarkt puts the combined market value of the four players at 590 million euros: Mbappé (200 million), Vinícius Júnior (140 million), Yan Diomande (90) and Jude Bellingham (160).
Signing them, though, cost around 313 million euros before add-ons. Real Madrid paid nearly 40 million euros as a signing-on bonus for Mbappé, an estimated figure the club has never officially confirmed, alongside 125 million euros for Diomande, 45 million for Vinícius and 103 million for Bellingham.
Factor in the potential add-ons and the bill climbs to 358 million euros, with an extra 15 million heading to Leipzig in the Diomande deal and around 30 million in the Bellingham deal. Even then, it sits well below the quartet's current market value.
The quartet could make their first appearance against Schalke in the city of Gelsenkirchen tomorrow, Sunday, during Real Madrid's final friendly before the opening of the Spanish league against Espanyol on 22 August.
For now, Mourinho is sticking with the 4-2-3-1. That system hands Mbappé the centre-forward role and pushes Bellingham back into the number 10 playmaker slot, the position in which he shone during his first season at Real Madrid, and with the England national team at the last World Cup under Thomas Tuchel. Vinícius and Diomandé will take the wings.
A switch to 4-4-2, as we saw late in the Deportivo match, or to 4-3-3, could drag Bellingham away from the scoring zone and pile on his defensive responsibilities.
Real Madrid are banking on this quartet as a pure attacking force, in a project whose ambition goes beyond restoring the glories of the legendary "BBC" trio: Karim Benzema, Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo. The club have assembled in a single lineup an attacking weight rarely seen in modern football.
Last season, the quartet scored 121 goals and provided 36 assists. Mbappé netted 42, Vinícius 22 and Diomandé 13, while injuries limited Bellingham to 8. Between them, the four also laid on 7, 14, 10 and 5 assists respectively.
Madrid expect those numbers to climb. Bellingham scored 23 goals and provided 13 assists in his first season, while Diomandé joins an attacking line far stronger than the one around him at Leipzig.
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Counting only the attacking trio, without Bellingham, Mbappé, Vinícius and Diomandé scored 77 goals and provided 31 assists last season. Only two trios did better: Bayern Munich and Barcelona. Harry Kane, Luis Díaz and Michael Olise racked up 109 goals and 61 assists for Bayern, while Ferran Torres, Raphinha and Lamine Yamal managed 85 goals and 33 assists at Barcelona.
Manchester City's trio of Erling Haaland, Jérémy Doku and Savinho scored 57 and provided 26. Over in France, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Ousmane Dembélé and Désiré Doué hit 52 goals and set up 33 for Paris Saint-Germain.
At Arsenal, Viktor Gyökeres, Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka scored 43 goals and provided 19 assists last season.
