Capital punishment for Barça failings
By the time you read this, it’s more than likely that Real Madrid will have confirmed their 34th title. After their ninth successive win on Monday, a 1-2 victory in Granada, they need only two points to lock out the league and, with a home game to Villareal due on Tuesday, before the last day visit to Leganés on Sunday, not securing the required points, seems highly implausible.
When a club wins a league title, it’s difficult to argue that they weren’t the best team over that season – no matter how truncated it may have been. Sometimes, a team can fluke a cup win triumph, a couple of easy draws and a fortunate win or two, and suddenly you have a winner’s medal. League titles are different. Over 38 games, luck, loss of form, injuries and other caprices of fate tend to largely even themselves out. Win the league and you’re the best. Simple as.
With Barcelona, the only regular true challengers the Los Blancos hegemony, repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot with the accuracy of a Sergio Ramos penalty, the Catalans have been inconsistent at best, poor at worst, and their challenge turned out to be tepid. Whilst there’s plenty of work to do for whoever is sitting in the coach’s seat at the Camp Nou next season if the Blaugrana are going to make a better fist of things, it would be wrong to think that all is sweetness and roses at the Santiago Bernabéu. A bit like the club plying its trade at Estadio Alfredo di Stéfano this season, the club’s performances have been less than the traditions of the club would require. Sure, they’ve won the title, but this hasn’t been a vintage Madrid season. They’ve been competent and efficient, but if Barcelona had been anything like they should have been, or arguably would have been in the club hadn’t jumped the gun and ousted Valverde, winning the league may not have been as easy as it has become.
Aside from a 2-0 home victory over Alavés in Matchday 35, five of Los Blancos’s last half-dozen games have been won by a single goal margin. They’re results that hardly smack of a dominant team. In fact, in more ways than one, Zidane’s success this season has been built on the performances of the club’s defenders. For example, that win over Alavés meant five consecutive clean sheets for the club, It’s the first time they have achieved that for 12 years, and on Sunday, AS headlined their front page with a picture of Thibaut Courtois labelling him LaLiga’s top shot-stopper and a likely shoo-in for the Zamora trophy.
The backline has also delivered at the other end of the park as well. When CR7 packed his bags for Turin, there was concern as to who would score the goals in his absence. Fortunately, Karim Benzema stepped up the plate, and his 19 strikes this season have been like god dust to the club. It hardly bears thinking about as to how Los Blancos would have coped had the 32year-old French striker succumbed to a serious injury. Just to point up that situation, the club’s next highest scorer is defender and skipper Sergio Ramos, with ten.
No one else has come remotely close to double figures with Toni Kroos and Casemiro each scoring four times. In total, no less than 21 different players have found the back of the net wearing a Real Madrid short this season, with Militão the only outfield player in the squad yet to notch a goal.
Luka Jovic, the troubled and often troubling, supposed back up to Benzema has only scored twice, in 770 minutes of playing time, and now seems certain to leave the club this summer, as much for his misdemeanours as his missed games and missed chances. ‘Jovic for sale’ screamed Marca on 9th July in the least surprising breaking news of all time. Next term, Zidane will be hoping for more luck with Eden Hazard suffering less time on the treatment table, but with Kylian Mbappé not likely to arrive until next summer at the earliest, Zidane will need to add some firepower to his forward line to be confident of retaining the title next term.
Back to Barça briefly. Unless they can perform some kind of miraculous return to form and win the Champions League, it’ll be a trophy-less season, and one that surely demands a change of coach. Plus, if Los Blancos were too reliant on Benzema, the way that the Catalans rely on Messi is a few notches up from that. When Luis Suárez notched the goal that relegated Espanyol, it was his 195th strike for the club, easing him ahead of Kubala and into third place on the all-time list at the club. He remains 37 behind César and as he’s surely into the last throes of his time in Catalunya, it’s a gap he’s unlikely to bridge.
To add a little perspective though, if you add the totals of Kubala, Suárez and César together, it totals up to 621. A lot of goals without question, but still nine less than scored by a certain little Argentine. If Madrid fans worry what they would do without Benzema, with Messi now 33, in the not too distant future, the Cules will have to face the most unpalatable prospect of all.
Dropping down to Andalusia,
the news of Manuel Pellegrini’s appointment at Betis will surely offer hope of better things to come at the Estadio Benito Villamarín. The Chilean is a widely respected and hugely experienced coach, and perhaps the identikit fit for what the club needs at the moment.
The problem is however, will he be given the time he needs to get Los Verdiblancos heading in the right direction again. Since the turn of the century, including Pellegrini, Betis have employed 23 coaches. Now, even with my limited maths, that pans out at an average of less than a season each and, when you take into account that Pepe Mel’s first stint with the club encompassed almost three-and-ahalf years, that pulls the numbers down even more. In fact, only Faruk Hadzibegic, Víctor Fernández, Paco Chaparro, Setién & Rubi have held on there for more than year.
Betis could do with the appointment being as successful as when Monchi arrived at Sevilla. From 1997 to 2001, the club trod water in the Segunda, and hadn’t had a top half finish in the top tier since 1995. Then the man arrives at the Estadio Ramon SanchezPizjuan. Sevilla win the Segunda, and have finished in the top half of LaLiga every season since, and all this without being bankrolled by a billionaire. Add in that Sevilla have only missed out on European competition once across the last 17 seasons. How good is that? Well, it’s a better record than Atletico Madrid, PSG, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan, AC Milan or Juventus. Plus, they’ve won more European titles (Champions League or Europa League) than any other club in Europe in the same period. Over to you Manuel, no pressure, mi amigo!