Usually found waxing lyrical about the Italian game, The Times‘ Gabriele Marcotti has turned his attention to a bigger fish, in Real Madrid. While the Spanish side have come under fire for their exit in the Champions League, Gabs believes they should stick with coach Manuel Pelligrini.
”In the polarised world of the Spanish football media, reaction to Real Madrid’s elimination by Lyons on Wednesday was perhaps predictable.
The Catalan press gloated in a rush of schadenfreude, speaking of “humiliation” and the “destruction of the Galaxy”, while the Madrid press were split among those, such as Marca, who have been calling for the head of Manuel Pellegrini, the coach, and AS, which has taken a more cautious line.
Two numbers crop up time and again: six and 250. The first is the years that the club have failed to reach the Champions League quarter-finals. The latter is an estimate in millions of pounds that Real spent on players last summer, as the club secured, among others, Kaká, Xabi Alonso, Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Both weigh heavily on Pellegrini, whose portrayal as a scapegoat is inevitable. After all, changing one coach is cheaper — and more satisfying — than ridding yourself of players. But a more informed analysis may reveal that sacking Pellegrini is probably not the way forward.”
Elsewhere, The Independent‘s James Lawton also has his view on Madrid’s mess, but points to ‘team spirit’ as the key to success.
”It was hard to know the greatest victim of the night when the map of European football power was rather more than singed by the flames licking Real Madrid and Milan. No, it probably wasn’t David Beckham milking once again his genius for injecting celebrity fantasy into a career that in truth rarely rose above the second rank.
However, there was something weirdly, even climatically symbolic about the way his profile could so easily be linked with the differing fortunes, and priorities, of three of Europe’s most famous clubs.
Beckham, naturally, was received warmly at Old Trafford and, given his forlorn status on the bench of ramshackle Milan, it was even by his standards a stupendous achievement to finish up on some front pages despite being so utterly overshadowed by the talent and momentum of his England team-mate Wayne Rooney.
But then this is so much the story of the second half of Beckham’s career, when fame has outstretched by such an outlandish margin anything resembling enduring achievement.
It meant that when you saw the depths to which Milan had sunk, and then heard the news from the Bernabeu, where Real Madrid’s Galacticos policy was once again in ruins, Beckham, strangely but unavoidably, had to be included in any analysis of why Manchester United, for all the horrors of their ownership, remain on course and two great clubs with a combined total of 16 European Cup wins, had failed so miserably.”
You might also find this interesting:
Leave a Reply