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A team has gone four matches without a win. What is worse, is they failed to score for over 450 minutes. The team is in danger of dropping to as low as 8th in the league table and to add to the problems, their performances aren’t any inspiring. When we read these lines, we expect the team to be a mid-table team, a team without much stars and not expected to challenge for titles.
Well, football is very funny, isn’t it? What if you, as a person who doesn’t know anything about football read these lines? It clearly highlights the failures that a team is going through. There is nothing much to hope for the fans. This is the point where irony is best explained.
The team is a 13 time European Champion, a 33-time league Champion. The person between the sticks is the FIFA Goalkeeper of the Year and the Golden Glove winner in FIFA World Cup 2018. The captain along with the man alongside him form one of the best centre-back partnerships in Europe’s Top 5 leagues.
The midfield is anchored by a Croatian, who was instrumental in his team’s runner-up finish at the World Cup. Even better, the Croatian mentioned before is the FIFA Best Player of the Year and UEFA Best Player in 2018.
This is the current reigning defending European Champions that we are talking about: Real Madrid C.F. The current form is the least of worries for Real Madrid. They are expected to be on the top of the league table but they aren’t.
A loss to Barcelona or Atletico Madrid can be understood. A once in a blue-moon loss to mid-table clubs can be understood. But Real Madrid is suffering from a whole lot more than that. They lost to CSKA Moskva in the Champions League and to Alaves the last match-day.
Today, after a short international break, the fans returned to their beloved home, Santiago Bernabeu, hoping for a win. Up against Levante, who were sitting pretty at the 11th spot in the table, Real Madrid was supposed to break their jinx with ease.
The fans at the Bernabeu were stunned into pin-drop silence within 6 minutes of the opening whistle. Morales opened the scoring. To make matters worse, Roger Marti converted from the spot in the 13th minute. Marcelo did give them hope in the 74th minute but the strike was too little too late.
A team like Real Madrid is never expected to play themselves into the situation. But the current situation is just disheartening for the fans. In a matter of three days, they will go a month without a win. They have managed to break their 116-year-old record of most minutes without a goal.
The players seem down and the sight of Julen Lopetegui on the benches after the first goal sums up the situation for them. Till today, they had excuses. They were playing away from home except for the tough fixture against Atletico. They missed Isco around whom coach Julen Lopetegui prefers to build his team. Although a team like Real Madrid is not expected to give these absurd excuses, we can accept that these are facts nonetheless.
What about today? It was an easy fixture at their very home and they had Isco back. They still went down to a humiliating loss. With an El Clasico looming around the corner, how can this team expect to win at the Camp Nou against an ominous Barcelona with a red-hot Lionel Messi?
The problem that lies within the team can be attributed to the poor coaching of Lopetegui or the departure of ace-player Cristiano Ronaldo. However, Julen Lopetegui had a good record with the national team of Spain before he was sacked. That is the prime reason he was appointed in the first place.
Fiorentino Perez doesn’t just choose anybody to build his team. Cristiano Ronaldo’s departure to Juventus does take a clinical finisher from the side. But another interesting fact is that Ronaldo got off to a terrible start last season, his conversion ratio started at 4.8% and dropped to as low as 1.7%. It took Ronaldo 8 games to open his league tally and Real Madrid still wasn’t in as bad a position as they are now.
While judging a team we have to judge four aspects. Attacking, midfield, defending and coaching. While we can criticise a coach when the team doesn’t perform, we need some justifiable reasons to do so. What can we criticise Lopetegui for? His team plays possession football, they are doing that. He should give attacking instructions, they are attacking, he should rotate his squad around, and he is doing that too.
So Lopetegui, in our view, is just being made a scapegoat for the abysmal performances of the team. There is a sensible argument while criticising Ernesto Valverde. Valverde makes defensive substitutions once there is a lead late in the second half. His substitutions don’t make sense, he took Vidal out when he was playing in red-hot form against Athletic Bilbao.
Valverde is not giving enough minutes to Denis Suarez, Sergi Samper and Malcom. While Rakitic and Suarez haven’t rested even in one game, thus affecting their physicality.
Zinedine Zidane wasn’t the greatest coach tactically either. Real Madrid’s poor league display last season is hidden due to their European success. Lopetegui has been at the club for just over four months and it is just too early to judge and sack him.
The grave mistake that Lopetegui is making is trusting Mariano too much rather than giving Asensio a start. This was a must-win for Madrid and he should have gone in with a strongest 11, choosing to rotate on another day. He tries to build the team around Isco which is another major error.
The attacking seems to be the biggest problem for Real Madrid. They are lacking attempts from open play. Real Madrid should be breaking apart opposing defences with inch-perfect through balls and quick one-two passes. Instead, they are trusting on set pieces and headers.
With talented midfielders like Isco, Modric and Kroos at disposal, Real Madrid of all teams is lacking creativity. It seems Karim Benzema is back to his usual self, being scoreless in his last 4 games. Gareth Bale has hardly showcased his pace to exploit the defences. This is not attacking at the very least.
Midfielders should control the game and be a cover for defenders while creating opportunities. Luka Modric’s favouritism towards Ballon d'Or 2018 will take a big hit due to his abysmal start to the new season. He is talented, belongs to the same pool of players as Xavi and Pirlo, yet his performances haven't been up to the mark.
He had a good performance against Roma in the Champions League. Barring that, his league performances have been underwhelming, his performance against CSKA was below par. This clearly isn’t a Luka Modric that showed up at the World Cup. Toni Kroos has been even worse. He caused the terrible back-pass against CSKA, very poor in his creation as well. Once Isco was injured Real Madrid looked out of sorts to create.
Defence is perhaps the biggest strength that Real Madrid possesses. The way Madrid was broken apart by Levante is unforgivable to the Madrid defence. One clean through ball put Morales behind the defence of Varane, Ramos and Marcelo.
If Real aren’t aware of these sneaky balls by a team like Levante, they just can’t expect to face the through balls by Kevin De Bruyne and Lionel Messi. Defenders like Varane and Ramos are expected to deal with high looping balls well. Their complacency caused them against Alaves as they let Manu Garcia pounce on the corner in the final moment.
The only shining spot so far seems Isco and his injury stopped all the momentum of Real Madrid dead on tracks. The players are down on confidence and this is not a mentality that a team needs ahead of an El Clasico. Players went out and said they play together as a team without Ronaldo.
They did show promise but when we look at the chances missed by Ramos and Bale today, it has to be said that they are missing a clinical finisher who is hungry for goals. Real Madrid might have needed to feed Ronaldo a lot last season but it was a win-win situation for both the team and the player.
Nobody in Real Madrid is showing the intent to score that Cristiano so badly had. Real Madrid wasn’t a one-man team even them but they had a proven goal-scorer at the ready.
Julen Lopetegui has to sort out a few things. He has to get the midfield together again, doesn’t matter if it is by resting his regular midfielders and giving a shot to Ceballos and Isco a shot at the game. His regular defenders have started each and every game, he can take a chance against Plzen to rest either of Varane or Ramos.
Mariano Diaz hasn’t been on a great form and clearly isn’t up to the standards that Real Madrid expects him to be. He should be playing on a much better level against teams like Levante and hopefully, Lopetegui can mentor him well.
Real Madrid clearly should have gone for a top-class striker in the summer window. They lost a goal-machine in Ronaldo and they let go of the talented Borja Mayoral. This is coming back to haunt them.
If we know Fiorentino Perez well, Lopetegui’s sack is arriving sooner than later, with managers like Arsene Wenger and Antonio Conte looking for a job. This team might be under one of them soon. Lopetegui might be the catalyst to success in the long run but Perez won’t have that much of a patience.
Fiorentino clearly missed a trick when he didn’t sign a proper striker and probably get rid of Benzema. Lopetegui’s biggest mistake is depending on Isco too much just like he did at the national team. Isco isn’t a guy who you build a team around, he is too young for it. It takes his freedom away.
So who can we blame for this abysmal performance? Perez? Lopetegui? The players? Everyone has an equal role in the downfall of the team. This team isn’t performing the best and this isn’t how they performed under Zidane. Perez just went too ahead trying to copy Barcelona’s transfer policy and bringing in only Vinicius, Mariano and Odriozola while he could really have gone all out for Timo Werner and Benjamin Pavard.
Real Madrid will be trying to get back on track soon. Whether Lopetegui gets the sack before the Clasico or whether Perez waits till the Clasico result remains to be seen. While it is the Madridistas who suffer from seeing their team in complete shambles while still having the best talents in Europe.
