Twelve months on from winning their 10th Champions League, Real Madrid are two games from finishing the season empty- handed.
|||Twelve months on from winning their 10th Champions League, Real Madrid are two games from finishing the season empty- handed. What happens next? It is the question everyone in the Spanish capital is asking. Sportsmail offers the most probable answers.
The problems
Not since Alfredo di Stefano in the summer of 1983 has a Madrid coach survived after not winning anything. As many as 14 have been sacked after failing to deliver a trophy and Carlo Ancelotti is unlikely to be the exception. Madrid continue to spend more than any other club but the trophies don’t match the outlay. They have only won the league once in the previous six seasons.
The spending
The philosophy continues to be non-negotiable — spend, spend, spend. They will keep throwing money at the problem despite having just been turfed out of the Champions League by one of their own. It was former youth-team striker Alvaro Morata who scored the goal that sent Juventus through to the final in Berlin on June 6 but there will be no U-turn on club policy — big signings will be more important than developing from within. Right now Madrid’s B-team are stranded in the third tier of Spanish football having failed to win promotion under Zinedine Zidane. So there is little — beyond 16-year-old starlet Martin Odegaard, who will be loaned out — coming through anyway.
The Manager
Ancelotti as much as admitted after Wednesday’s Champions League elimination that his future is now in the hands of Real president Florentino Perez, who has never kept on a coach after he failed to produce a single trophy in a season. Jurgen Klopp is the most high-profile candidate and he will be free when he leaves Dortmund this summer. Klopp doesn’t speak Spanish and is understood to favour the Premier League, however, and Real’s president is understood to want a Spanish replacement for Ancelotti. That could clear the way for Rafael Benitez — who is likely to leave Napoli at the end of the season — but don’t rule out a Spanish coach already working in La Liga with European experience. Ancelotti will ride off into the sunset with that Champions League he claimed last year under his arm. There will be no shortage of suitors, but they are unlikely to include Manchester City, who have consistently said the Italian is ‘not their type of manager’.
The outs
Real Madrid’s bench has been poor this season. Bringing on Javier Hernandez to salvage a Champions League semi-final is not good enough for a club who spent fortunes building the best side in Europe last season. Real have a £195million forward line and many at the club see it as unacceptable that they have a Manchester United fringe player as their fourth striker. Chicharito will not be retained but he will not be the only one to be shown the door. Fabio Coentrao has only played 38 per cent of possible games in his four years at the club and will be sold. Alvaro Arbeloa is likely to follow him. Lucas Silva only joined in January but will now be loaned out. Asier Illarramendi could end up back at Real Sociedad after being a £30m flop and 22-year-old striker Jese could be farmed out on loan.
The ins
If they dodge the bullet of a potential transfer ban from Fifa, Madrid will spend big again. David de Gea is a priority. Iker Casillas wants to see out the final two years of his contract at the Bernabeu but Real want to get some money for him now and bring in the goalkeeper who will succeed him at international level. They could yet sign left back Jose Gaya from Valencia despite him having signed a new contract two weeks ago, while a better fourth striker than Hernandez is also high on their list of targets. But perhaps their most important purchase will be an aggressive midfielder whose running will allow the likes of James Rodriguez and Gareth Bale to play with fewer defensive responsibilities.
Gareth Bale
Bale stays. Perez did not spend €100m of the club’s money to cash in after two campaigns. It will not be too long before Cristiano Ronaldo heads off to the USA to finish his career in the Californian sunshine and Bale is first in line to the throne. He wants to make his third season as successful as his first and there is some recognition at the Bernabeu that he needs to be used better. There is no point in having someone with his explosive pace and finishing ability, only to load him down with defensive responsibilities on the right of a 4-4-2. Madrid want to go back to a 4-3-3 next season with a new midfielder to toughen up the team and allow Bale and Ronaldo to run free and terrorise defences as they were doing last season.
And Ronaldo . . . ?
He can become the club’s all-time top scorer next season but then it may well be time to start thinking about his next career move. He has become more of a centre forward this year and less of a rampaging deep-lying attacker. Next season the emphasis will be on him working with Bale instead of against him. Karim Benzema and Rodriguez will contest the third striking berth and a heavy-weight such as Dortmund’s Ilkay Gundogan or Paris Saint-Germain’s Marco Verratti will be brought in to bolster a midfield also containing Luka Modric and Toni Kroos.
Real Madrid 2016?
de gea
varane
marcelo
bale
Rodriguez
ronaldo
modric
verratti
kroos
danilo
ramos – Daily Mail
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