The rant

 

We are in December, almost a year since the pandemic has started and many lives affected. Something that has not been different from last December at this time, is Real Madrid (RM) football. In fact has actually gotten worse if not stayed the same. It has been a while since I wrote something here and wanted to use this opportunity to talk about what has been literally frustrating for me as a fan. So, this post will be very football focused.

 

Let's start at the beginning for me, the beginning was when Zinedine Zidane (ZZ) resigned on May 31st 2018. A series of events forced him out and among those that I have identified myself without being part of these conversations and based on articles and observations are:

·        The squad had run its course and could not get higher than they had been: Champions league repeat which has never been done in the modern era of football

·        Florentino Perez's refusal to sell Bale and keep Cristiano Ronaldo

·        The refusal of the board to provide players needed to inject the new blood in the team for it to continue to be competitive.

 

For those who are fans, you already know what then unfolded: a series of poor performances and humiliations that were not worthy of this club. But in the midst of all that, ZZ came back, he came back less than a year after leaving, on March 11th 2019. The reasons he came back are numerous, amongst them, his eternal love for the Merengues. There were demands that he made on coming back, the most important ones: the signing of key players namely Hazard, Pogba and Mbappe. He only has gotten Hazard out of the 3 and the board, and Florentino at the helm, has literally not delivered and the justification they give is simple. The goal of the board is to get Real Madrid healthy financially while making upgrades to the stadium, so the influx of new talents has been literally stopped for 3 years (if we go back as far as the ban received from FIFA for signing under-age players). The focus has been in looking for the newest un-polished talent around the world, mainly in Brazil (as Florentino has had an obsession with Brazilians since the club missed on signing Neymar). They have developed one of if not the biggest network of scouts that scrapes the face of the earth to find the new shiny young talents that they intend to develop through Castilla or via loans. The idea is for them to become great and contribute to the first team right away or be sold to bring some money to club coffers. But a key element of this plan has completely been ignored whether willfully or not: the expectation that RM has to win; and win no matter what is going on as fans expect the team to perform. Or at least try and show commitment to win which they did by winning the last season, thanks to the virus as it allowed the team to rest and focus on the last 11 games. So why is RM struggling, below I will try to provide my personal thoughts/analysis on the reasons.

 

·        The roster

This team has been needing some fresh blood for a while; fresh blood in the sense of getting experienced players that could directly contribute, not via teenagers as they have done. These kids cannot be expected to perform and deliver for what is the pinnacle of football. This club has crazy demands, each game is a final and is treated as such by the fans and what have we seen? Half of our legendary back line is on the wrong side of 30 with only one still carrying the team in Ramos while Marcelo has been a shell of his former self. It is sad for me to see him performing so poorly and he should have left 2 years ago and the time of Lopetegui and Solari proved that he was not at the level. This begs the question of the players we developed and sold. The case of  Reguilon first who could have been of such help for this team right now,  especially due to the tactical setup that requires the full backs to provide the width and are the main providers of crosses in the area. There is also the poor level of performance of the other half, we have Varane who have been in RM for 10 years but cannot for his own sake perform as an insurance in this backline whether with Ramos or anyone else, he is so inconsistent that I wonder what exactly he learned playing alongside Ramos and Pepe (who for me was the best pair of central defenders that I have personally witnessed. Even better than the Vidic-Ferdinand of Man United pairing and the Nesta-Cannavaro of Italy). We signed Militao who has been very poor and also has not been given enough chances to perform, he does look like a bust so out of the list of central defenders only Nacho is playing at a very good level. On the right side, Carvajal has slowly recovered his form after his heart issues but cannot stay fit for a month, his natural substitute in Odriozola has been so poor and lacked so much confidence that he was sent on loan to Bayern for half a season last year. We have had Lucas Vasquez a natural winger who had to deputize there and has been our best and most consistent full-back.

 

The midfield is another area where the roster has not been provided with what is needed, there is no back-up for the only defensive mid we have in Casemiro. We know that Ødegaard was recalled from his loan with La Real Sociedad but has not been playing much as we all expected. Modric is 35 years old and still a very good mid but he is 35!. Kroos has been the same old but he needs better pairing around him for his contribution to provide even more offensively. Players such as Isco are not at the level required to be in RM anymore and that has been the case for 2 years at least, loaning Ceballos, selling Llorente are decisions that are haunting us now. There is absolutely no depth in midfield where the only player who has developed and become a key contributor is Fede Valverde. A team of this caliber cannot have such thin options that are not even diverse in its roaster.

 

The attack is by far the area that needs the most improvements, we have Karim Benzema (KB9) that is the only consistent contributor. Then we have teenagers who have not had a full professional season where they've played consistently in Vinicius and Rodrygo on whose shoulders the whole weight of the madridismo's expectations are placed. We also have Jovic who barely featured somehow even though 60 millions euros were spent on him and the ghost of Asensio who has peaked at 24 years of age and is just not adding anything to the team when he plays.

 

·        The coach- the tactic

The great RM of 2014-2018 was the result of heavy investments in the team and tactical setups from Jose Mourinho mainly but also Ancelotti then Zidane. But Zidane and Ancelotti before him inherited ready made teams that were seasoned and knew how to play and were hungry to win. The key of that roaster was the attacking trident and the full backs. We had true right wingers in Di Maria and Bale, a machine on the left wing in Cristiano (CR7) and the best 9.5 in the world (who is truly a 10) in Benzema. KB9 allowed this team to be lethal in a 4-3-3 set-up as he will always drop in half-spaces between attack and midfield, therefore dragging at least one central defender with him, which created space for CR7 and Bale to run-in behind. Besides that, the actual wingers of the team were Marcelo and Carvajal, on left and right, respectively. We had Casemiro dropping down to form a line of 3 defenders on offensive phases and Kroos & Modric in midfield controlling the tempo. There were iterations of this system that could morph into a 4-4-2 when introducing Isco or James for one of the wingers, this allowed more control in midfield. There was flexibility in this team.

The issue now is the team is more or less being setup by ZZ to play the same way with a high press while we do not have the players to execute this approach at all right now, especially in attack. The logic suggests that a change of approach should be made first because of the roaster. We now have Mendy (who is super average offensively) for Marcelo, we have Vinicius whose brain is faster than his legs, no true right wing that offers verticality (to push the opponent's back line further down) and KB9 who is still dropping in the space while the players around him have no understanding of what they have to do.

 

All of these things are the responsibility of the coach as he has shown a clear incapacity to find the best formula to make it work with this roaster. True, he did not get new reinforcements but he is responsible for allowing some players to leave and flourish elsewhere while we are in need of players with their profiles. This is just ridiculous that this team has resorted to play to not lose and count on luck for goals. Something needs to change because the writing is on the wall about a real disaster this year, besides the fact that I'm 90% convinced there will be no silverware this year. The pragmatic approach of the previous season worked but this is not going to cut it this year; he has to find a way to make things work with what he has at his disposal and not force a system that is clearly not appropriate for the squad. Anyone observing with a keen eye can see that.

 

·        The president- the board

I never thought I would be saying this about RM's board, but they are the victims of their own success and since they raised the bar that high, I will be using that high bar to judge. From his first stint as president, Florentino Perez has made us used to having marquee signings, splashing millions across Europe to assemble all star teams that had comparatively subpar results on the field but masterstroke financially. This man is a billionaire and at the top of one of the biggest construction conglomerate in the world, so he is not an idiot. We all know that, judging by the last financial results of RM published last week where we can see that the team is sound financially with absolutely no debt, which is great but it begs the question, do all these results have to directly affect the performances on the field? Let me rephrase this, is there a correlation between success on the field and financial performances? The easy answer will be a resounding "Yes" but in fact it is not the case in reality. Good example, the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL have not won a super Bowl since 1996 I believe but they have been valuating at an increase every year since and are one of the most successful sports franchises in the world. Francisco Perez-Cutino (2008) said, in his unpublished MBA thesis at Judge Business School in Cambridge:

 

"But contrary to the common idea that good [on field] performance will drive good financials,

There is evidence that better revenue-generating structures can have a significant impact in the performance of the team… only with good financial results clubs can buy and retain good players and create good teams."

 

A team should be developing sustainable economic-sport models to make profits to buy and retain better players, which leads to better results. Another study from the book Winners and Losers: The Business Strategy of Football (1999) by Stefan Szymanski and Tim Kuypers details this extensively. So my point is I know that a well rounded structure for marketing and generating revenues has been implemented in RM. We have a very good business savvy guy as president and also Jose Angel Sanchez who use to be CEO for SEGA southern Europe before joining RM in 2000 with Florentino. This makes it worse when you place their record in managing the finances with what they have provided managers in terms of players over the last 4 years. It is borderline professional negligence, to think we could lose CR7 and without investment still be/stay competitive on all fronts and for me they carry the brunt of the responsibility of the miserable display the team is providing week in and week out for the last 2.5 years. The obsession of not having debt which I support should not come at the expense of the team's performance and investments need to be made to get the rewards. Even if there are no true correlations between the two, one cannot be sustained or efficient without the other. Funny enough, what was Florentino biggest criticism (splashing money all the time for big players) has become his handicap as he refuses to indulge in such endeavors for his second stint as president. The real issue for me is the lack of sporting strategy, hence the need for a Sporting Director that can align his vision with whoever is the coach, this will impact players that are signed and how to incorporate them. I cannot believe my beloved RM has become so reactive and weak in terms of transfers.

 

Quick addition: I see RM might be missing on M'Bappe, if this is the case I will not surprised to see fans asking the board to step down because that will be utter incompetence if we are missing on all the stars that are supposed to be part of the long term plan when the renovated stadium is open. This will be their fault as they uncharacteristically built their whole strategy on just one player that they did not even sign. As Alice Morse Earle once said

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”

 

Hala Madrid!

 

 

 

 

References

 

Mandis, Steven G. “Real Madrid's on and off-Field Dominance.” Essay. In The Real Madrid Way, First Ed. DALLAS, TX: BENBELLA BOOKS, 2016.

 

Szymanski, S., & Kuypers, T. (2000). Winners and losers.

 

Perez-Cutino, F. (2008). Innovative approaches to increase revenues for football clubs. Can good business sense make football better?