Madrid played at the Bernabéuas if we were facing the last match of the course. With a sense of urgency as inappropriate as it is unnecessary at this stage of the season. There was a hard soul and a hard leg, but also anxiety, vagueness and a point of despair. City ended up winning naturally … : Madrid lacked football. Lots of football. Between sorrow and nothingness, he chose nothingness.
The defeat, beyond the score, left a familiar feeling: that of a team which has been in a permanent state of exception for some time. Any adversity is seen as a fire and every match is played as if it were a final with no future. This tension, which was once fuel, now appears as noise. And the noise, when not accompanied by the game, becomes a burden on some footballers’ legs, a shadow of what they once were.
Their place among Europe’s top eight teams is under threat as they have been far behind Europe’s top eight teams for two seasons. The situation does not merit much further analysis. The rest are just excuses. When one of your wingers scores a goal and it becomes a media event, it’s a sign that something is not going very well. The fact that current Rodrygo Goes was the best on the team yesterday paints a really unflattering picture. Vinícius, for example, had a very bad match when we most expected him, with Mbappé as a pillar on the bench. And Bellingham is looking for an identity in the countryside, lost in no man’s land.
Meanwhile, Madrid continue to take refuge in the referee’s alibi every time a setback appears. The victimist discourse has permeated the supporters and part of the locker room. For some players, protest is already their mother tongue: hands in the sky, angry gestures, constant noise.
The easy way out is to point the finger at Xabi Alonso, insist on the refereeing conspiracy and continue to look the other way. The hardest part (the salmon one, as Calamaro would say) is to sit Vinícius down, speak to him clearly, raise the demands of manners, manners, and regain control of the situation. Because without this internal change, no list, no signature and no regrets will be able to correct what is currently a structural problem.
Madrid has time to rebuild itself, but for that, it needs a dose of self-criticism that it has not practiced for a long time. And show real, determined commitment to your coach, not the players. Otherwise, they will continue to play finals in December, protesting every decision and inevitably falling into the place where teams who confuse personality with noise fall: far from Europe and even further from themselves.
About The Author
