COVID-19 rescued Real Madrid

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This article was published 17/07/2020 (2227 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winning changes everything.

It was only 16 months ago, following an embarrassing home defeat to Ajax in the Champions League, that Real Madrid president Florentino Perez threatened to kick captain Sergio Ramos out of the club. Ramos, in retaliation, tried to arrange a free transfer to China — something Perez rejected outright.

Around the same time, Zinedine Zidane was reappointed manager at the Bernabeu but could only guide the club, which he had left the previous spring after winning a third successive European Cup, to five wins from 11 matches and a third-place finish.

Without a total rebuild, went the popular thinking, Madrid wouldn’t be winning anything anytime soon, especially after Cristiano Ronaldo’s departure for Juventus. So, Perez spent €300 million to supposedly bolster the squad. A third of it went to Chelsea in exchange for Eden Hazard, and the rest was used to bring in defender Eder Militao, left-back Ferland Mendy, teenage winger Rodrygo and Serbia striker Luka Jovic, who was coming off a 27-goal season with Eintracht Frankfurt.

Ramos, promised a new contract the next summer, cooled off, and Zidane, satisfied by the president’s performance in the transfer market, began preparing for a season in which Madrid would be back in contention and challenge holders Barcelona for the title.

Nothing — absolutely nothing—went according to plan.

Given the No. 7 shirt and essentially tasked with replacing Ronaldo on the left of the attack, Hazard suffered a hamstring injury in the first game of the season. His quite forgettable campaign was then further blighted by a bruised ankle, a broken foot and a fractured fibula. He started barely a third of Madrid’s Liga matches and scored just a single goal.

It didn’t go much better for Mendy, at least to begin with. The France international was injured to start the season and picked up another knock in September. He played only two full games before November, although his late-season form was impressive.

Militao, for his part, didn’t figure in successive matches for three months at the outset of his Madrid career. Rodrygo, the Spanish product, did show flashes of what Los Blancos can expect as he matures, but he, too, was troubled by a hamstring in August and even spent some time with the B squad before working his way back to the big team.

Then there was Jovic.

The 22-year-old never really settled in the Spanish capital and was dropped by Zidane in February. A month later, back home in Serbia, he was openly flouting coronavirus restrictions, and shortly after returning to Spain he broke a foot. Finally reintroduced to the squad, he came on as a last-minute substitute in a 1-0 win at Athletic Bilbao, but three days later he was forced to self-quarantine after going out with a friend from outside the club’s COVID-19 bubble. All told, Jovic played only 770 minutes in 2019-20, scoring twice.

But it was COVID-19, incidentally, that also rescued what might have otherwise turned out to be a disaster of a season for Real Madrid.

Having lost 2-1 to a late goal at Real Betis on March 8, Madrid went into the lockdown with just a single win from four. Zidane would later say that the defeat at Estadio Benito Villamarin gave his side something to stew over during three months of inaction, and when La Liga restarted on June 14 the second-place outfit was a team transformed.

The break quite clearly did 33-year-old Ramos, 34-year-old Luka Modric and 32-year-old Karim Benzema some good, and it also allowed Mendy to return to full fitness. Ramos and Rafael Varane set up an impenetrable defence in front of rejuvenated goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, and when Ramos was suspended to face Alaves and Varane picked up a knock against Athletic, Militao filled in admirably. As a unit, they conceded just four goals after the resumption.

Probably no one, however, made as much use of the downtime as Benzema.

Without Hazard to count on, and with Gareth Bale seemingly perpetually out of favour, the striker went into the final stretch of the schedule knowing his goals would be vital in resuscitating the season for Madrid. He scored seven, including both in the hosts’ 2-1 victory at home to Villarreal on Thursday to clinch the title.

Ramos, impressively, added five more in what proved to be one of his best seasons of an already outstanding career. And Brazil international Casemiro, an unsung hero, not only re-established himself as one of the world’s top defensive midfielders but also scored the only goal in a crucial triumph at Espanyol.

Add it up and Real Madrid put together a 100 per cent record post-lockdown — one they’ll look to complete with a final win at Leganes, Sunday, in their final match of the season.

Of course, they were helped along by Barcelona, who self-destructed in June and July with their fate in their hands. The typically docile Lionel Messi went to war with manager Quique Setien, and the talisman’s displeasure with club administration reached such a point that it was rumoured he’d exit Camp Nou during the summer. Rather than risk losing him, the Catalan giants will likely retool over the next few months and attempt to do next season what Madrid did this.

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In the meantime, Ramos, so recently at odds with his employer, will be savouring a title that seemed so unlikely until last month. Perez is back to being one of Real Madrid’s all-time greatest presidents. And Zidane — now the club’s third-longest tenured manager — is once again the Midas who has delivered a trophy every 19 games.

Nothing turns a narrative quite like success. Winning, as Madrid have shown in this strangest of seasons, changes everything.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

Twitter @JerradPeters