The Real Madrid of the second blank year, of the fight between Tchouaméni and Valverde, of Kylian Mbappé’s mockery with his escape to Cagliari or his Instagram messages, of Arbeloa invoking the spirit of Juanito or the decomposition of a sports project that, two springs ago, lifted the Champions League, was born one fine day in May 2025 when Florentino Pérez and Xabi Alonso promised wine and roses.
Carlo Ancelotti languished, unable to fit the team together with the arrival of Kylian Mbappé and the departure of Toni Kroos, and the Basque coach who had made history at Bayer Leverkusen arrived to “start a stage of tremendous excitement and intense emotions,” in the words of Florentino Pérez. The president, faithful to his history of coaches, was not fully confident with Alonso, who belongs to the other profile of coaches who stand out for those terms little established in Valdebebas: methodology, videos (he even included a drone in the sessions), positional play, and the collective above individualities. And in the Club World Cup, a stage too big for such a bold idea in such a short training time, the seams began to show with the core of the squad heading in another direction.
The white team started the season strong, with an insatiable Mbappé and a diminished Vinícius with benchings and substitutions. The new coach did not choose his enemies well, wanting to be democratic in an autarchy, that of the players, and ended up abandoning his principles and being sacked. The first symptom was the 5-2 at the Metropolitano that started the first long faces with Bellingham. Barely two weeks later, in Almaty, Fede Valverde said in the pre-match press conference that he did not like being a full-back and was later caught, in a video by OK Diario, with his hands behind his back and not warming up in the second half when Alonso sent him on. Authority was beginning to be lost, but everything exploded in the clásico, won 2-1 but with an ugly gesture from Vinícius when substituted that definitively redirected the coach’s fate. The Brazilian apologized days later with a note, but without mentioning the coach. The Bernabéu, which saw its Madrid as leader though not convincing with its play, began to boo Vinícius and side with Alonso, but something had already definitively broken in the dressing room. “I didn’t know I was coming to coach a daycare,” published Marca. The words were from the coach in a training session at Valdebebas. Sources from his coaching staff attest to the toxicity of everything experienced.
Alonso was sentenced after losing the Supercup, Álvaro Arbeloa arrived, a trusted man of Florentino Pérez and the agency Best of you, linked to the president’s son. A soft hand who from day one devoted himself to the players and brought physical trainer Antonio Pintus into the coaching staff, something Florentino demanded. But nothing was as it seemed. It was not about running more, but about where to run.
After the ridiculous debut in Albacete (3-2) that knocked Madrid out of the Cup, the team lost points in the League (there were chants against Florentino Pérez, the loudest in his years as president) that distanced them from Barcelona and revived in the Champions in the knockout rounds against Mourinho’s Benfica (probably the end of this story) and Guardiola’s City. Used to Madrid performing heroics in the Champions despite wandering in the League, Bayern brought them down to earth penalized by Camavinga’s childish red card at the Allianz Arena (4-3), another of the players disconnected all season that reflects the white indifference and who dared to say, in a joke that was a revelation, that Arbeloa was like Ancelotti and gave them Oreo cookies after training.
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Arbeloa also did not devote himself to all the players, only a few, and had tensions with Ceballos, Asencio, or Carvajal, captain without an armband. The effect of the gray sofa of the Salmantino lasted a sneeze, and his press conferences appealing to Madrid’s pride leaned more towards a meme: denying a fire that even a blind man could see. Nevertheless, Arbeloa, an intelligent guy according to everyone who knows him and those who studied the coaching course with him, left stitches with thread: “We have to put the collective before the individual.”
The fall of Madrid points to the dressing room and Florentino, and forces the club to a revolution, although there are no resources for it
Everything that has happened in recent months reflects the club’s drift, without direction at the sporting level, with overprotection of some players who have lost their references in the dressing room and who have gained more power than the coaches themselves. What happened the week of Barcelona’s title could be hung in Madrid’s museum of horrors, the club of 15 Champions that, as Valdano says, “has always gotten along very badly with defeat.”
Immersed in an economic situation not to make too many boasts due to the problems that have occurred in the Bernabéu works, which have reduced income, a complete reconstruction is almost impossible unless one of the stars is sold, whether Mbappé, Bellingham, or Vinícius, something that for now no one has confirmed. That is why Mourinho, another old acquaintance of the president, sounds strong, a firefighter to put out impossible fires and to take the medication away from Cibeles, subscribed to Prozac for two seasons.
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