ZIDANE MAKES CASE TO KEEP THE JOB FOR REAL
ZINEDINE ZIDANE was always going to be a tough manager for Real madrid to sack — you cannot just take a club legend out with the trash the way you can any other coach.
After Saturday’s clasico comeback he may have earned the right to stay in the job for the long term. For all former Real madrid president Ramon Calderon’s talk of the job being Jose mourinho’s when he wants it, Zidane staked his claim in his first clasico in charge, and he did it in a way of which mourinho would have been proud.
madrid suffocated Barcelona’s football and overpowered them in the latter stages of the game as they tired. The visitors — despite the dismissal of Sergio Ramos — only got stronger.
‘I’m very proud of my players because not many teams win here,’ said Zidane, after becoming the first manager since 2007 to win his first clasico in charge — something mourinho, Juande Ramos, manuel Pellegrini, Carlo Ancelotti and Rafa Benitez all failed to do.
When Gerard Pique headed Barca in front on 56 minutes they looked like stretching their unbeaten run to 40 games and their lead over madrid to 10 points. But after goals from Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo, the gap at the top of La Liga was cut to seven points with seven games left and the talk was of a Barcelona implosion.
Asked how Real had finished the game so strongly, Zidane said: ‘It really gives you a lift when you score here.’ He knows, of course. A veteran of playing in this fixture, he had sent his players out pumped up and believing they could take three points from the home of their great rivals.
No player better manifested that new-found confidence than Gareth Bale, who emerged from exuberant dressing-room celebrations to say the league was not beyond Real and the Champions League very much within their grasp.
‘Everyone says that Barcelona are the best team and we have beaten them in their own backyard, so mentally it puts us in a great position,’ he said.
‘There’s a long way to go in the league and Champions League. We just need to keep going.’
It is Barcelona’s ability to keep going that will now be severely tested. They barely have time to lick their wounds and they are thrown back to the lions, with Atletico madrid their opponents in tomorrow night’s Champions League quarter-final first leg.