They have turned on Rafa Benítez with indecent haste. No one said it would be easy managing Real Madrid, but the speed at which critics have rounded on the former Liverpool manager, who was unveiled as the new man at the Bernabéu at the start of the summer, is faster than normal.
There is poignancy to his plight. It is the job Benítez dreamed of. He broke into tears at his presentation last June. The prodigal son had returned, 20 years after leaving the city where he was born, raised and got married. In fact, he did his military service only 100 yards or so from the stadium.
Benítez joined Real Madrid at 13 years of age, and when his playing career was cut short following a knee ligament injury picked up playing for Spain at the World Student Games in Mexico in 1979, he joined the coaching staff at Real Madrid, briefly serving as Vicente del Bosque’s No 2 in 1994, before setting off on a 20-year global football coaching odyssey.
Something Benítez might find confounding is that he has logged credits in his journal as manager. Real Madrid have already qualified for the knockout stages of the Champions League with two games remaining while his squad has been bedevilled by injuries.
The problems, however, are mounting. There is despair at his endless tinkering. He can’t seem to settle on a regular formation. His teams’ line-ups vary from 4-2-3-1 to 4-3-3 to 4-4-1-1 to 4-3-2-1 to 4-1-4-1, sometimes alternating in the midst of a game. He’s like a man fiddling with a Rubik’s Cube.
Clean sheets
Even his successes – which include clean sheets in all four Champions League outings – are turned into negatives. Despite 33 goals scored in La Liga, which is 10 more than rivals Barcelona, he's savaged in the Spanish press for being overly defensive. The lack of goals conceded by Real Madrid this season is being explained away by the stupendous form of keeper Keylor Navas who has been nicknamed Keylor Paras ("Keylor Saves") by his teammates.
His team sets up with a bank of three central midfield players – Luka Modric, Toni Kroos and the Brazilian Casemiro – to shield the back four. Gone are the days of his predecessor Carlo Ancelotti’s freewheeling attacking play. Benítez favours control over spontaneity.
The team’s performances have been workmanlike, rigid and in some cases flat, particularly their anaemic 3-2 defeat to Sevilla in the last round of league games.
A telling incident occurred during the derby with Atlético Madrid in early October. Real Madrid led 1-0 during the second half when Benítez substituted their goalscorer, centre forward Karim Benzema, for an extra midfielder, Mateo Kovacic. The ploy failed. Atlético nicked a late equaliser.
When Benítez was asked afterwards if any errors had upset him in the match, he singled out Sergio Ramos's flaky defending which led to a first-half penalty. The defender had taken an "unnecessary risk". Benítez was being logical, matter of fact. Ramos, however, who, along with Cristiano Ronaldo, was one of the senior Real Madrid players who lamented last summer's departure of Ancelotti, wasn't impressed.
While holed up at training camp with Spain a couple of days later, Ramos, who became club captain this season, countered by criticising his team coach for his lack of ambition against Atlético. “We could talk about my mistake or we could talk about the substitutions that were made in the game,” he said. “We all learn from our mistakes, players and coaches.”
Benítez's tactlessness has led to a series of avoidable issues with Ronaldo, the three-time World Player of the Year winner whose self-love is famously so intense a journalist reviewing the new documentary, Ronaldo – the Movie, which premiered in London last week, reckoned he must shout his own name during sex.
Best player
In pre-season, Benítez refused to identify Ronaldo as the best player in the world, merely “one of the best”. When pressed on the issue in September before a Champions League tie, he dug in. “I cannot say Ronaldo is the best I have ever coached because I have had some very good players.”
They were bizarre, pedantic answers from a coach who has never managed another Ballon d’Or winner, and a failure to observe Rule # 1 in the Real Madrid coaching manual: publicly claim Ronaldo, the club’s all-time top goal scorer, is better than Lionel Messi at every opportunity.
Benítez is already on a sticky wicket with Ronaldo. Benítez serves at the pleasure of Real Madrid's billionaire president, Florentino Pérez, who is notoriously disdainful of his football coaches, having once fired seven in a three-year spell. Part of the brief given to Benítez by Pérez is to move Gareth Bale centre stage. Bale, a presidential favourite, was signed by Pérez, unlike Ronaldo who came to the club during the previous Ramón Calderón regime, is seen as the successor to Ronaldo who will be 31 years of age in February.
Pérez sees Bale, the world's first €100 million player, as his creation. He is protective of his starlet. According to in a report in AS, one of Madrid's sports newspapers, Ancelotti's cavalier handling of Bale contributed to his demise.
To facilitate Bale’s evolution as Real Madrid’s number 10, Ronaldo has been shunted from his favoured left-wing position. He’s looking out of sorts. In Real Madrid’s game against Paris Saint-Germain at the Bernabéu, he failed to get a touch of the ball inside PSG’s box. He hasn’t scored in nine of his 15 games this season for the club, and his shot-to-goal ratio is at its worst rate since arriving in Spain in 2009; it currently stands at 12 per cent compared to 26 per cent last season.
Off the pitch, there are reports Ronaldo is toying with a move to PSG, who have been long-time admirers, next summer and has stated his interest to PSG coach Laurent Blanc.
It could be in Real Madrid’s interest to cash in its asset, and recoup a sizable portion of the €93 million outlay it made six years ago. Benítez’s future at the club is also uncertain. He knows he is in a weak political position. According to Calderón, he was only the president’s fourth choice as manager in the summer behind the Germans Joachim Löw and Jurgen Klopp and José Mourinho, whose outlandish behaviour Pérez found entertaining, particularly his goading of Barcelona.
In the meantime, Barcelona comes to town for today’s clásico at the Bernabéu. They’re hitting their stride despite their own early-season injury crisis, which includes the sidelining of talisman Messi for the last eight weeks. A win for Barça would put the club six points clear at the top of La Liga.
In Messi’s absence, Neymar Jr and Luis Suárez, dubbed “the two new Messis” by the Catalan press, have been in devastating form, racking up 20 goals between them in 10 league games. It may well take all of Benítez’s tactical guile, and some sorcery by Navas in goal, to keep them at bay.
Richard Fitzpatrick is the author of El Clásico: Barcelona v Real Madrid, Football's Greatest Rivalry (Bloomsbury).
