From La Decima to decimated, axe will soon fall at Real Madrid after Barcelona Clasico humbling

 

Unlike a president who does what he wants when he wants, if Real Madrid’s players had discovered their own sense of regulation and self-order, and been in the right place at the right time at the Santiago Bernabeu on Saturday evening, there would have been no need for El Presidente to address the media 48 hours later. There would have been no need for any of last night's happenings, and what it all means for Rafael Benitez and his lost Galacticos.

There would have been no need for Perez to offer his “full support” to Benitez less than six months after he himself had proclaimed Rafa as the correct figure to apply a winning formula to football’s richest squad, who have just filed for bankruptcy on the pitch.

Madrid were brutally mauled by Barcelona in their own living room. As Spanish and European champions, Barca are the benchmark for any team, but Benitez came up badly short. He is not the only man who should be pleading guilty to a case of stolen identity in a squad stealing a living.

Whoever were filling the all white shirts at the weekend, it was not a team, merely a collection of seemingly pampered, unfit, disorganised individuals. Madrid can’t and won’t continue in such a diseased state.

Should Real Madrid fire Rafa Benitez?

Yes 

No 

 

[RELATED: Real Madrid president Perez gives Benitez his full support...for now]

“It will go down in history as a memorable game for Barcelona,” said the visiting coach Luis Enrique as he poured vinegar on Madrid’s gaping lacerations. Those comments never go unnoticed in the capital.

Perez may not have said as much, but by giving Benitez the clichéd and dreaded vote of confidence, he more or less fired the starting gun in his search for a new coach.

He can’t be seen to be such a poor judge of character by making the former Valencia, Liverpool, Inter and Chelsea manager walk the plank three months into the season, but that won’t save Benitez in the moment of truth. Who cares about a three-year contract? Rip it up, and start again.

Perez has chopped 13 ‘A-list’ coaches in 15 years, including Vicente del Bosque, Fabio Capello and Jose Mourinho, spanning two terms as president. Yet Madrid have won only one Liga title in the past eight years. Nick Leeson’s spending made more sense.

As unlikely as it sounds, even winning Liga may not spare Benitez capital punishment for being party to such an infamous uprising from the Catalan giants.

“What happens in six months’ time, none of us can know,” said Perez, adding a message of foreboding that detracts from the full support he had earlier given Rafa.

Benitez is merely keeping the technical area warm for the next victim. Carlo Ancelotti was dismissed during the close season only three months after he was supported by Perez back in March. At least Benitez will see the blade coming.

'La Decima' and a 10th Champions League success under Ancelotti were quickly forgotten in a part of the world where apparent collective amnesia prompts the daily question: what have you done for me lately? The lack of a suitable alternative has bought Benitez time. Zinedine Zidane would represent an experiment rather than an appointment. 

Perez claims Madrid have been a squad in decline since January when Ancelotti was picking the team - or was he? Perez’s interference is said to stretch beyond the boardroom.

There is nothing the 68-year-old billionaire loves more than rinsing away his troubles. When you can spend like a drunk sailor, why wait for sober thoughts. Yet money is not the remedy. There is a storm coming, and the coach is not the only figure being threatened to be ripped from his moorings.

The BBC is in real danger of being broken up because it has become a self-indulgent symbol of real disunity, even more so than 80,000 white hankies being waved. 

Sam Smith singing ‘Writing’s On The Wall’ from the new James Bond film ‘Spectre’ would have been apt walk-on music to the Perez musings. The Writing’s On the Wall, and not only for Rafa.

Reports from Madrid suggest Benitez has been told by his employers he is free to drop Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema to make his system work. Chopping Ronaldo would tell you more about Perez’s train of thought than Benitez’s ideology. 

[RELATED: Ancelotti installed as favourite for Real Madrid AND Chelsea jobs]

If such a policy is played out, Ronaldo is living on borrowed time. It appears to have dawned on Madrid that Gareth Bale is not the main culprit in this calamity after he was unfairly berated last season.

Benzema is another impostor, who apparently has a keener interest in film than football these days. You couldn’t make it up.

Real Madrid's President Florentino Perez gestures during a news conference at Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid - Reuters

Perez denied suggestions that Ronaldo has apparently purposefully gone off the boil to force him to sack Benitez, a coach whose style he allegedly disapproves of.

Scoring 13 goals in 18 matches so far does not hint at a mutiny or a natural enmity between coach and player, but Madrid may view this as the right time to flog their most protruding asset and recoup a hefty chunk of the money they unearthed to land him from Manchester United in 2009. 

United and Paris Saint-Germain are apparently salivating over the prospect of recruiting the Portuguese forward, whose agent Jorge Mendes may already be gleefully studying what lies ahead next summer with a rabid Manchester City likely to want a taste of such action. 

Who else could go? Take your pick. Sergio Ramos, given his apparent ongoing longing for Ancelotti? Luka Modric and Toni Kroos, who were hopelessly outmanoeuvred in midfield by a Barca unit smelling the scent of a decaying corpse? Nobody will be safe if Madrid do not quickly discover a pulse.

From La Decima in 2014 to decimated two years later. There is likely to be blood on the carpet. Perez’s latest very public post-mortem could quickly become a purge at a kitsch outpost where patience rarely wins out.

 

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