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MADRID, SPAIN – JANUARY 21: Cristiano Ronaldo (L) of Real Madrid CF and his teammate Gareth Bale (R) in action during the La Liga match between Real Madrid CF and Deportivo La Coruna at Estadio Santiago Bernabeu on January 21, 2018 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images)
Negligence
To say that Madrid rested on their laurels would be something of a falsehood. Madrid have been hibernating on their garlands of honor to such an extent that it has allowed them to be overtaken by not simply the usual Barcelona but also Atletico Madrid and Valencia.
Madrid are in many ways the antithesis of Barcelona. While the Catalan club prides itself on their deep attachment to their roots and to a certain extent because of that their academy La Masia Madrid is the opposite. The club has always prided itself on its ability to buy talent.
Something they have always done with a ruthless and at times seemingly ridiculous approach to transfer spending. From Di Stefano to Puskas to Figo to Ronaldo Real Madrid have always been a buying team. They have homegrown talent at times absolutely but make no mistake flexing financial muscle is very much so a part of Madrid’s authoritarian image.
The last time that Madrid truly spent at the top-level was in 2014-2015 when the club spent near 100 million on James Rodriguez and Toni Kroos. The Colombian isn’t even still with the team.
That Madrid’s dominance came after such a strong period of Barcelona’s is an important thing to note. During Pep Guardiola and some of Enrique’s reign, their was no questioning who the best team in Spain was. Sure Madrid won a league in the middle and competed but La Liga belonged to the Blaugrana without a doubt.
For Madrid to be as good as they are now they needed to struggle to break through that Barcelona ceiling. They needed to be spending 100 million every season and trying to improve, innovate and incubate talent at the highest level constantly. Then once those players had actually been together for a couple of years and blended they hit the high’s of the past two.
Madrid forgot what made them great and they relaxed into it.
Without Barcelona pushing them as thoroughly and bugging them to be their best selves Madrid got lazy. In the place of buying Ronaldo, Kaka, Kroos, Bale, Isco or Modric came in middling talents or unproven youth players like Vinicus Junior or Theo Hernandez. The team of the last two years was the fruit of five years ago’s effort. This years team is the contented and lazy child of last seasons platitudes.
It is said that in football the only thing that you can never do is stay in place. You can either move forward or backwards. Trying to maintain position is impossible because the game always changes. If you’re trying to maintain 10th position the following season you will be 12th then 14th and so on. Adapt or die.
A man needs a great nemesis or rival in life. They are the thing that pushes you to be your best. To work harder, to study more, to be as hungry as hungry can be. Barcelona are that for Real Madrid. So the fact that Real Madrid’s greatest period of success came right on the back of Barcelona’s shouldn’t be at all surprising.
Madrid did not adapt and they became too pleased with themselves and now they are struggling.
Classically Barcelona are phenomenal again and top of the league by a country mile and a quarter there after. Real Madrid are rumored to be in the market to spend nearly 500 million pounds this summer. A sum large enough to buy most other clubs let alone several players.
The rivalry between the two is what ultimately keeps them going. What would have been truly special for Madrid though would have been to rise above it. To take it upon themselves to not try to beat Barcelona but their own best. To beat the record-holding best team in the history of the best club. That would have been the aim that kept them on course instead of firmly lost at sea.
Instead, they’ve now stumbled.
Madrid will make changes soon in several quarters but they may not recover soon enough to save this season in the way that they should surely have wanted to in the first place.
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<p>Zidane never moved out of that. His success was predetermined by a team that was already formed, trained and organized. He simply watches them play and speaks in press conferences. As a coach Zidane is way out of his league at Real Madrid and it is beginning to show.</p>
<p>This though is the fault of Perez who clearly wanted to write a storybook ending for a player so beloved by Madrid fans that no one would argue that he has never even managed a professional before. Perez jumped the gun in appointing Zidane. It is not at all similar to the Barcelona model because Madrid are not academy based.</p>
<p>The players at the top-level would not have some sort of affinity for a coach from the academy. All of Barcelona’s players had a prior relationship with Pep. Madrid’s simply know how great a player Zidane was.</p>
<p>That, in the end, is the issue. This is a classic case of a great player being expected to be a great manager. Zidane isn’t and he never was. He never had to coach this Real Madrid team that was built, gassed and ready for lift-off long before he got there. Now that some actual managing is required an experienced coach would know the necessary move.</p>
<div class="next-slide slider"> <a class="next-slide-btn" style="background: #0" data-track="shortcode" data-track-action="next-slide-shortcode" href=https://playingfor90.com/2018/01/30/madrid-is-burning-by-barrett-rouen/2/"#"> <span class="title">Next:</span> Age </a>
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<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-448357" src=https://playingfor90.com/2018/01/30/madrid-is-burning-by-barrett-rouen/2/"https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/fetch/c_fill,g_auto,f_auto,h_389,w_590/https%3A%2F%2Fplayingfor90.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fgetty-images%2F2018%2F01%2F911028636-valencia-v-real-madrid-la-liga.jpg-850x560.jpg" alt="Real Madrid" width="590" height="389"><div class="fs-center-img">
<p class="wp-caption-text" style="width:590px;">VALENCIA, SPAIN – JANUARY 27: Toni Kroos of Real Madrid celebrates with teammate Cristiano Ronaldo after scoring his sides fourth goal during the La Liga match between Valencia and Real Madrid at Estadio Mestalla on January 27, 2018 in Valencia, Spain. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)</p>
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<h3>Age</h3>
<p>Real Madrid are old.</p>
<p>It’s really just that simple. It’s not that players above a certain age can’t play anymore. I don’t subscribe to that idiotic Arsenal and Chelsea belief about players over the age of 30. Maldini was still the best in the world at 35 after all.</p>
<p>It is just that they need reinforcements.</p>
<p>Real Madrid because of their historic achievements have needed their players to play in more matches than ever before. The same players were racking up 55-65 matches in a season and still reporting to their respective countries for international duty. It is an impossible task that they are being asked to complete time and time again.</p>
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<p>Three years ago at the beginning of this run, Ronaldo was 29-30 in the middle of his prime. Sergio Ramos was 27-28 and Benzema was 27 and Modric 28. It was a phenomenal group of players who all knew each other well and had been together for a while. They were all in the heat of their careers and it was a perfect scenario.</p>
<p>That hs simply changed now. Ronaldo doesn’t look like he’s going to score 60 goals and Ramos is suddenly much more fragile than years before. Benzema simply looks like a bad player and Modric has less pace than he used to have.</p>
<p>The team has simply aged and they haven’t prepared for it well at all because of the aptly already discussed negligence.</p>
<p>If Real Madrid adapted their strategy during this time to better suit the changes in their squad things would be different. Under Guardiola Barcelona famously made one large tactical change per season in order to stay relevant. 4-3-3 to 3-4-3 to the invention of the false 9 that team changed something every season. Real Madrid simply stayed the same and because of that they have gone stale.</p>
<div class="next-slide slider"> <a class="next-slide-btn" style="background: #0" data-track="shortcode" data-track-action="next-slide-shortcode" href=https://playingfor90.com/2018/01/30/madrid-is-burning-by-barrett-rouen/2/"#"> <span class="title">Next:</span> False Leadership </a>
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<p class="wp-caption-text" style="width:590px;">GIRONA, SPAIN – OCTOBER 29: President Florentino Perez of Real Madrid CF gives thumbs up before the La Liga match between Girona and Real Madrid at Estadi de Montilivi on October 29, 2017 in Girona, Spain. (Photo by Alex Caparros/Getty Images)</p>
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<h3>False Leadership</h3>
<p>Florentino Perez needs to take a large chunk of this blame.</p><div class="widget fs_ads"> <div class="fs_ad_widget-ad" style="margin:0 auto; width: 300px;"> <div class="fs-ll-ad" data-ad-type="minutemedia_slideshow_inline_300x250__desktop__tablet" data-vendor="minutemedia">
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<p>He has too personal a relationship with the players. One of the reasons why Zidane is hamstrung for options is that Perez makes so public his affections and opinions. He doesn’t keep his options close to the vest at all.</p>
<p>He’s a very difficult person to work for. For instance his public affections for Benzema. It is readily available knowledge to the public that Benzema is Perez’s favorite player. He has kept the French bad-boy with the team for a long time despite the fact that he hasn’t been on top of his game for a while.</p>
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<p>Perez thinks less about football than he does about image. This though it should be acknowledged is a strength as much as a weakness. It is because of Perez that Real Madrid are the financial powerhouse that they are today. It is because of him they shift so many shirts and can afford players the way that they can. There’s literally no player who costs too much or would be too expensive for Real Madrid because of the way Perez has run the club.</p>
<p>That needs to take a back-seat for the time being. That muscle is only good so long as Madrid use it. They need to identify targets who can help drag the club back to respectability and then they need to make the deals for those players happen.</p>
<p>Perez needs to stop playing the good guy to all the players. He’s the ruthless businessman who made Madrid into the machine they are today. In order for that to continue he needs to be that leader again. If he wants to really be a friend to the players he needs to be a leader.</p>
<div class="next-slide slider"> <a class="next-slide-btn" style="background: #0" data-track="shortcode" data-track-action="next-slide-shortcode" href=https://playingfor90.com/2018/01/30/madrid-is-burning-by-barrett-rouen/2/"#"> <span class="title">Next:</span> The Return </a>
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<p class="wp-caption-text" style="width:590px;">MADRID, SPAIN – JANUARY 13: Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid reacts during the La Liga match between Real Madrid and Villarreal at Estadio Santiago Bernabeu on January 13, 2018 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Denis Doyle/Getty Images)</p>
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<h3>The Return</h3>
<p>Football is not as good without a good Real Madrid. They need to make a comeback and here is how they should.</p>
<p>For the rest of this season, Madrid should be concentrating on the Champions League. Rest players in the weeks leading up to big matches and even publicly acknowledge that the club is now entirely chasing the trophy. Amp up the pressure in Europe. It’s do or die.</p>
<p>For many of the players, this will be their last season at Real and they need to make some changes. It needs to happen.</p>
<p>The league then should be used to bleed new players. See which ones have characters and which ones don’t. There are many good players who simply couldn’t play at Real Madrid. The volume was too high and the heat too hot. That’s O.K. but those players need to be identified and replaced. Real Madrid can never become a waiting place for the mediocre.</p>
<p>Then Madrid needs a great culling. Cut out the dead weight. Lose them.</p>
<p>Karim Benzema, Gareth Bale, Nacho, Luka Modric, Keylor Navas and Marco Asensio should all go.</p>
<p>Asensio just because he doesn’t seem made for the stage the same way as others would have hoped. Talented yes, but mentally strong it doesn’t appear so.</p>
<p>The only reason Ronaldo is not on the list is because frankly he’s the top scorer in the history of the club and if he doesn’t say he wants to leave then Real Madrid would be too disrespectful in letting him go.</p>
<p>With the sale of those players, Real Madrid must be able to raise between 140 and 180 million pounds.</p>
<p>Then Real should declare war.</p>
<p>It’s been rumored that Perez has already outlined 500 million to spend on players this summer. Add on the money raised and that could be almost 700 million pounds. That is what Real need to do.</p>
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