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Just after winning three consecutive Champions League trophies, Los Blancos have had the worst start to a football season in their club's glorious history. They are currently ninth in the LaLiga table, they are struggling to score goals, making simple defensive error and if all this was not enough, yesterday they were thrashed 5-1 by their eternal rivals FC Barcelona who were playing without their main player Lionel Messi.
The first reason which comes to everyone's mind is the absence of Cristiano Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane. Both Ronaldo and Zidane were undoubtedly Real Madrid's beat ever player and coach respectively. As football genius Johan Cruyff has said," Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.".
That's what Zidane did, he made Real Madrid play simple football and won a lot of trophies. With absence of club's all time top scorer, Real Madrid lost 40-50 goals per season and were unable to replace him with a worthy player. Florentino Perez's overconfidence in the club's current squad has cost a lot of harm to the club. As the result speak for themselves Julen Lopetegui has been a joke of a manager for Los Blancos.
Julen Lopetegui's Madrid had started the season with a bright and positive outlook. They were scoring a ton of goals and were even getting good results.The UCL game against AS Roma was perhaps the best game Real Madrid played under Julen Lopetegui. Lopetegui started the season with his own football philosophy similar to Spanish tiki taka.
The team was creating a lot of chances through the midfield unlike Zidane's Madrid which mainly played through the wings. When Lopetegui started getting disappointing resulsts, he tried to replicate Zidane's tactics with a similar formation, which failed miserably in his possession based game.
A clear proof of this change is the fact that Lopetegui didn't let Dani Ceballos play even a minute in the El Clasico who was perhaps Team's best midfielder under Lopetegui's system.
The third reason for Madrid's downfall this season is the aging core of the squad. All the main players of the squad namely Sergio Ramos, Marcelo, Benzema and Modric are above 30 years of age. Other players like Kroos and Varane lack the motivation as they've already won everything there is to win in the football game at such a young age.
With the club in transition period there is no time to develop young players. Therefore Real Madrid need to make some huge signings in this winter transfer window to get the club back to winning ways.
