Real Madritis?

by Raül Pope Fargüel for Forza Futbol: 

Football fans are notoriously fickle and the more successful a club is, the more fickle the fans. This is no more clearly manifested than in the likes of Manchester United, Real Madrid and Barcelona, while Liverpool, Chelsea and Valencia fans seem to believe they’re successful.

This week Real Madrid sacked Jorge Valdano, football’s very own philosopher, no matter what Ibrahimovic says. While Guardiola is pragmatic and level-headed, I would argue, Valdano’s prose and beauty when he speaks leaves you slightly drunk, hanging on his every word and mesmerised just as I imagine Socrates may have left those he defeated with his words.

Since the sacking I have done my best to speak to Madrid fans, something I try to avoid as I really can’t stand the blinkered mentality of most merengues, but there’s a definite split in the camp. Valdano was the last bastion of the beautiful game at Real Madrid and José Mourinho, who has seemingly gotten his own way with Valdano’s sacking, is now the sole proprietor of Real’s future success and this sits uncomfortably with those (fickle?) fans that want success and good football, something Valdano, for them, embodies. Florentino Pérez disagrees and has gone with the results-based Mourinho to guide his latest galáticos project to victory.

The decision to go with Mourinho over Valdano is an obvious one but it is contentious. Alfredo di Stéfano, Madrid’s honorary president, has been critical of Mourinho and his tactics this year, the sports papers, both Marca and AS, have on occasion questioned Mourinho when they haven’t won. If Madrid wants success, is there a better man than Mourinho? He won’t play the tiki-taka like Spain or Barcelona as we’ve seen with Inter and Chelsea, but he will win things, however for some this is not enough. The fickle nature of some fans means that now Madrid are winning the style needs to evolve into something like Spain and Barcelona which could make things interesting next season if the status-quo is maintained.

Why is this the right decision? As a culé I am more afraid of Mourinho and his effective, work-until-you-drop style. It may not sit well with the fans that want sexy football, but Mourinho’s determination to succeed should not be underestimated. I don’t expect Kaká to be at Real next year and the only thing keeping Cristiano Ronaldo at Madrid is his goal tally, without that he’d be a stroppy Joe Cole who Mourinho, amongst others, grew impatient with and side-lined. Mourinho will make the difficult decisions, driven by writing his own legacy and continuing to create his own cult of the personality and that’s a dangerous combination.

You can’t have a dog and a cat working together to catch a bird, they’re too different. The dog will charge the cage and knock it over before trying to get at the bird, while the cat will wait and toy with the bird, seduce it into opening the door and walking into its mouth. The determination of Mourinho, this time, means he’s boarded up the cat flap and will surely have to batter the bird into submission next season to please those who demand success and appease those who want the football.

Hala Madrid 1.2: Is this Really Madrid?

It's an interesting time at Real Madrid. The club keeps winning and yet, for the fanatically obsessed madridista it's measured by their lack of purpose, their inability to string two significant passes together, and their failure to dominate lesser opponents. Some blame the tactical intransigence of their coach. Others more practical assert the lack of playing time together for the starting eleven, and even some the overly romantic notion that a club like Real Madrid can even entertain the contradicting philosophies of winning every match and playing well in them. This isn't an argument for or against good football. I've come down squarely for the fact that the large clubs owe it to their supporters to play well. This isn't even a criticism of Jose Mourinho although I think I've done so many times in the past, and it bears repeating, just not here and now. 

You see, the most overused statement of the last month is that "Real Madrid aren't playing well, but give them time, this squad with these players will function sooner or later" and that is why this club falters to a certain extent. That's wrong. The reality is that this club has been buffeted for the last decade on the winds of conflicting strategies, differing philosophies if you would. I'd go into the differences between Vicente del Bosque and Carlos Queroz, but it's a similar situation to what happened with Pellegrini and Mourinho, no these are the bookends of a long arduous process, one that has always featured the often incompatible needs of the club to play well and win everything. Here's the  timeline.

Del Bosque wins the Champions League with a club led by the likes of Zidane, Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos and is fired. Reason? Not sexy enough for Real Madrid, too much of a company man, and there are other candidates that are younger, fresher and more deserving of the role than the hound-dog Del Bosque. Perez hires Carlos Queroz, Sir Alex Ferguson's number two at Manchester United, and quickly finds that the brand of football suffers. The complaints roll in, that his brand of football is too defensive, and there are fractures in the relationship like having Makele sold from underneath his nose that conflict with the philosophy that Perez wants to emulate: the classic Santiago Bernabeu teams of the late 1950's. From that point, it was a matter of managerial ping-pong: Jose Antonio Camacho, Mariano Garcia Remon and Wanderlei Luxemburgo over the next year and a half, running three wildly different philosophies of play and purging and gorging the club of some great players suited best two either one system or another but not both. How many great players came and went through the gates of the Santiago Bernabeu over the next five years? The next batch, Lopez-Caro, Fabio Capello, Bernd Schuster and Juande Ramos all presided over a system that has been reactive and not pro-active, beholden to any footballing philosophy at all, as long as it worked somewhere else first.

I hate to say it but blame starts at the top. They had the opportunity to close the ideological gap with the Nou Camp last year and they gave it away by continuing the failed practices of the last 10 years. You want to blame Jose Mourinho, be my guest, I won't argue with you, I'm usually on the front-line of that lynch mob, but this is a fact that won't go away. While Florentino Perez has been in charge of Real Madrid he has two league titles and a Champions League trophy (their ninth) to his name, but nothing of note since firing Vicente Del Bosque. I'd like to think that things will change, but this looks like more of the same, a generational
 malaise tied strictly  to the business practices of Florentino Perez.

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