Lionel Messi and Pepe Pic: © BackPage Images/Rex Features
As the clock approached 10pm local time on Sunday night, Real Madrid were delving from a mini-crisis into one of galáctico proportions.
At the end of a turbulent week for Los Merengues, and most notably their coach, Athletic Bilbao were leading 1-0 at the Bernabéu and should have been further in front.
A day that started with pro-Madrid sports daily Marca publishing a heated conversation between Jose Mourinho and Sergio Ramos on its front page (in which the current tensions in the Real dressing room between the contingent of Portuguese and Spanish players was evident) was going from bad to worse.
Mourinho’s name was booed by the majority of the home faithful, Cristiano Ronaldo gave Xabi Alonso the stink eye and a season that seemed so full of promise just four days previous was beginning to crumble.
But, for all its divisions, this Real Madrid is simple too good to fall apart, well at least against opponents who don’t play in blue and red.
Marcelo scored a wonderful equaliser and having committed the first cardinal sin of playing against the big two in the first period by not taking their chances, Athletic committed the second early after the break as Ander Iturraspe conceded a soft penalty to hand Ronaldo the chance to make it 2-1.
A further Ronaldo spot-kick and a late strike from José María Callejón put an excessive gloss on the final scoreline, but as much as the Bernabéu breathed a huge sigh of relief, the feeling remains that the seeds of an institutional crisis have already been planted.
A 4-1 victory against an opponent who have played wonderfully in recent weeks would seem like the ultimate vindication for Mourinho after the criticism he has had to endure since Real’s 2-1 home defeat to Barcelona in the Copa del Rey on Wednesday. Yet, if anything, by winning in such a manner with a team so transformed from that defeat he gave the media an even heavier stick to beat him with – that they were right and he was wrong all along.
Mourinho had left Marcelo, Mesut Özil, Kaka and Esteban Granero on the bench against Barca, all four started and impressed on Sunday, with Marca’s match report declaring “Ozil makes the difference”.
The Portuguese coach spun the boos aimed at him into somewhat of a rite of passage at the Bernabéu. “Zidane has been booed here, Ronaldo too. Why would they not boo me? If it happened somewhere where they don’t boo anybody, like at Chelsea, I would be worried. But in a stadium where they boo Zidane and anyone else, it doesn’t bother me.”
Yet only hours later on the TV programme “Punta Pelota” respected journalist Siro Lopez was quoting sources close to Mourinho as saying he was definitely off in the summer, apparently at the end of his tether with the media and those from within the dressing room who had leaked stories to the press this week.
Unfortunately for Mourinho though, the Madrid media’s reasoning is for once pretty reasonable. The self-titled Special One’s managerial career has been built on the fact that no matter how pretty, or otherwise, he wins. That was a sacrifice they and President Florentino Perez were willing to make in order to beat the juggernaut that is Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona.
And after suffering disappointment in the league and Champions League last season, Mourinho could be proved right again. Sunday’s victory moved Real back five points clear at the top of the table, a huge gap in a league where both sides have amassed over 90 points in the last two seasons and one which should Real continue to win Barca will be unable to surmount.
However, the manner of Wednesday’s defeat is what has raised such great questions. Mourinho rightly insisted that the cup is third down the list of Real’s priorities this season, but outwith the 2-6 and 5-0 defeats in 2009 and 2010 respectively this was the most convincing of Guardiola’s nine wins over Madrid as Barca boss.
Madrid’s inferiority complex with the Azulgrana slipped to new levels as even before Ronaldo’s opener they surrendered possession and territory, hoping to smother Barca by sheer weight of numbers and physicality in midfield. It didn’t work, even at half-time with Real leading 1-0 the Barca comeback seemed inevitable as the host’s system had failed to do what had set out to do, deny the visitors clear-cut chances. The European champions had just uncharacteristically missed them.
So when the pattern continued in the second-half and Barcelona eventually emerged victorious, the knives were out for Mourinho. Winning at all costs is fine, but sacrificing everything in terms of style, tradition and pride and losing is unpalatable, even more so when a club that prides itself on the names of Di Stefano, Puskas, Hugo Sanchez, Zidane, Figo, Raul et al now sees a player who acts like Pepe did (and has done before) being picked ahead of the likes of Ozil and Kaka.
Moreover, it has been proved that performance wise at least, Madrid have come far closer to toppling their great rivals when they have played with more courage, higher up the field and taken the game to them.
Which is what makes this Wednesday’s return leg so crucial. The tie is almost certainly beyond the holders, but a positive performance will at least ease the tension and criticism. A heavy defeat or even a narrow one in a similar manner to that last week though and the machinations in the dressing room will be blazed across the pages of the sports dailies once again on Thursday morning.
Seville derby returns
928 days seemed long enough, in the end they had to wait 1079 as the Seville derby returned this weekend for the first time in three years. Delayed five months due to the player’s strike at the start of the season it was well-worth waiting for. Spain’s most passionate derby, played in Spain’s most passionate atmosphere roared into life in the first-half with a fine goal for either side scored by Beñat Etxebarria and Álvaro Negredo.
Unfortunately that was as good as it got as the second period failed to live up to the intensity of the first, especially once Sevilla had been reduced to 10 men and settled for the point, but on the bright side there was no repeat of the crowd violence that has marred fixtures between the two in the not so distant past.
Magic Messi
It seems so obvious and so clichéd to say it, but Leo Messi was simply brilliant on Sunday afternoon as he ensured there would be no repeat of Barca’s slip-ups away from home this season with his fifth, yes fifth, hat-trick of the season in a 4-1 win away to Malaga.
It says something of the consistency with which he scores extraordinary goals that it was perhaps his first – and towering header into the bottom corner – that caught the eye more than the two brilliant jinking runs that he produced after the break .
Keiran Canning writes for Spanishfootball.info. You can follow him on twitter here.
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