La Liga Superthread 2009/10

Mr.Nice Guy wrote: »

. I think they play Deportivo next so that should be another good game.

kryogen wrote: »

this is the first real decent/good team they have played and they failed misreably, it could have been alot worse for them and probably should have been

dfx- wrote: »

Atletico Madrid 1-1 Mallorca too

I watched most of the Real match and all of the entertaining Sevilla match. Espanyol and Kameni were well worth it a draw and really really should've snatched it in injury time..

The Lesson Madrid Will Never Learn
Posted 02/11/09 09:53
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Now the last thing that this peace-loving column wants to do is to begin by insulting that strata of Spanish society that are both Real Madrid fans and Marca readers by calling them mindless, half-wit drones incapable of independent thought.

So this is why it will merely repeat the cold hard fact that, after a less than sensational spell for the Bernabeu club that saw defeats to AC Milan, Alcorcón and a goalless draw at Sporting, one poll in the sports daily claimed that 62% of voters wanted Manuel Pellegrini fired after just eight league games in charge of the club.

Another poll published on the same Friday said that just 13% thought that the Chilean coach was actually to blame for the side's early season teething problems.

And herein lies the fundamental problem at Real Madrid.

Everyone, from the club president to the cleaners know quite well that the manager is rarely to blame whenever the good times go bad at the Bernabeu. But that doesn't stop them being booted out at regular intervals to manage the mood of the masses.

As an under fire Pellegrini pointed out, last week, "Real Madrid have had eight coaches in five years and only won two out of eighteen titles." The former Villarreal boss failed to mention that those two trophies were the league titles of 2007 and 2008 and were won by coaches who were fired either minutes after celebrating their success as in Fabio Capello's case, or in a matter of months as with poor Bernd Schuster.

"The same criticism, the same names," sighed the club's latest scapegoat at Friday's press conference, which continued to be dominated by Tuesday's 4-0 reverse in the first leg of a Copa del Rey match against Alcorcón - a side the size of an English non-league outfit lying to the south of the city.

Pellegrini wasn't even able to blame the weakness of the squad sent to face the fixture. There were no wide-eyed youth teamers to be seen. 250 million Euros spent over the summer means that Karim Benzema and Raúl was the forward line that faced the lowly opposition.

Instead, the professorial manager had to ride with the punches as sections of the Spanish press called for his head on a platter, after the defeat. Or more accurately, Marca did - the paper whose main role these days is to make sure that El Presidente remains blameless and stain free at all times.

"Florentino has played his role. It's Pellegrini who not fulfilled his part of the deal," tutted an editorial in an edition that had the paper's director listing twenty reasons why the perfectly capable Pellegrini should be sacked after just five months and replaced by Sven Goran Eriksson, just one of the candidates for the new boss suggested by Marca.

Whilst Marca were right to say that Real Madrid have been outclassed by the only two strong sides they have played, Sevilla and Milan, and have yet to find their feet in the new season, Pellegrini cannot be completely blamed for a less than spectacular start to the year.

Over the summer, the Chilean coach announced that he was planning important roles in the new campaign for the Dutch duo of Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder. Unfortunately for Pellegrini, both were bundled out of the Bernabeu fairly late in the day with the excuse that their sales were required to balance the books.

However one of the main real reasons for the double flogging was that the massively petty Florentino wanted to purge the squad of the players signed by Ramon Calderón, the previous president, irrespective of the damage to Pellegrini's plans.

The money raised was apparently required to fund the purchase of Karim Benzema, from Lyon. A far smarter move would have been to have hung on to Robben and kept Spanish international striker Alvaro Negredo, who has been in fantastic form for his new club, Sevilla.

Unfortunately, Negredo's media profile is not high as Benzema - a player who has shown signs of a bright future, but only in flashes. Pellegrini's problem is that he is under pressure play Benzema in every encounter despite a record of just three goals - or one every 256 minutes so far this season.

The Frenchman's inclusion often comes at the expense of a system that sees Kaká pushed out to the wings and relied on the genius of the still injured Cristiano Ronaldo in the early stages of the season.

The Chilean coach must also put up with the likes of Guti, too, a player that his bosses opted to keep over Sneijder. The 'maverick' - and take that word as you will - midfielder began his latest week at Madrid by turning up for training last Sunday two hours late, giving the clocks going back as his excuse.

He continued by being utterly useless in the Copa del Rey defeat, sticking his middle finger up at fans, and telling Pellegrini to "shove it up his arse" when told he was being substituted at half-time.

But it's not just the top-performing players who have been forced out of the club to make way for Florentino's dream team that have caused issues for Pellegrini this season, but the footballers that are still there but sidelined for not being sexy enough.

Gonzalo Higuaín is a case in point. The 21-year old banged in 22 league goals in 34 games for Madrid, last season, and has dug his side out of numerous holes with a string of astonishing last minute winners.

However, because of the political impossibility of Pellegrini dropping Benzema, Ronaldo or Kaká - and not to mention Raúl - the Argentine international has made just two league starts this season.

Luckily for Higuaín and Real Madrid, the club captain was rested ahead Tuesday's Champions League clash against Milan, and the young striker got his chance to begin Madrid's game on Saturday night and grabbed two brilliantly taken goals to give Real a much-needed 2-0 win against Getafe.

"He's Madrid's secret weapon," screamed AS the morning after, as if they had just discovered the player called up to Diego Maradona's latest squad that takes on Spain in a fortnight's time.

Although Florentino Pérez claimed on Sunday that he was "happy with Manuel Pellegrini and is sure that he will end the season positively," there is no good reason to believe a man with a reputation in Spain as 'the devourer' of managers.

The club president's sense of self-preservation and the personal risk to his all-important reputation is far too strong to allow Pellegrini to have any sense of security of the Bernabeu bench.

The memory of the suited and booted Real Madrid president sitting in a grotty municipal stadium on a Tuesday night, watching his expensively assembled outfit going through what the Spanish press called "the club's biggest humiliation" is not one that will be forgotten anytime soon.

Johan Cruyff wrote over the weekend that "everyone knows that the coach isn't in charge at Madrid, but others are." The Dutchman was quite right in his opinion, especially when compared to the current situation at Barcelona.

When Pep Guardiola said he wanted Deco, Ronaldinho and Samuel Eto'o gone, they were gone. And when he said he wanted Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the Swedish striker came, despite the doubters in the Catalan capital.

The only control that Manuel Pellegrini has at Real Madrid is over the DVD player in the team coach. And even then you suspect that it's Raul who really holds the remote control.

And this is why an Arsene Wenger did not come to the Bernabeu last summer. And this is why Jose Mourinho never will, the second of the managers that Florentino wanted to lead his Galactico reboot.

But this is a message that Madrid's rulers will simply never get through their thick skulls.

Almost any manager in the world could be tempted with the opportunity to stand on the touchline at the Santiago Bernabeu with the knowledge that he was in charge of the team from top to bottom with the range of powers of Sir Alex Ferguson.

But with the size of egos of the presidents at the club, it's never going to happen. And Real Madrid will forever be just two bad results away from sacking another scapegoat.