Real Madrid criticism at fever pitch

Opinion

REAL Madrid Club de Futbol enjoyed a few hours of quiet on Thursday.

Archrivals Barcelona weren’t in action, having thrilled in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal against Inter Milan the night before. So at least the jealousy had cooled.

Quite briefly, they weren’t even the top story at their own club. Real Madrid Baloncesto had that honour after losing their EuroLeague basketball series to Olympiacos. Misery, at least for one evening, had company.

Oh, and things are miserable at Real Madrid — the football version. Miserable, and very, very loud. (Except for Thursday.) The mood is so bad amongst the team, the press and the fans that you’d never know Los Blancos are just four points off the top of La Liga with five matches still to play.

Working backwards, it’s somewhat surprising that the most coherent complaints (it’s all relative) are coming from the supporters. And there’s a reason for that.

This Madrid squad has no Raul, no Casillas, no Sergio Ramos — no player, in other words, who is universally popular and beyond the criticism of the socios who own the club and feel entitled to being heard.

There may be elite, high-profile players in the team, but there are no favourites. Which means, perhaps fairly, that the public can blame everyone equally.

Jesus Vallejo, Lucas Vazquez and David Alaba were named the three most unpopular Meringues in a recent poll by Diario AS, but none exceeded 15 per cent of the votes. Eight players hit the 5 per cent mark. There’s plenty of anger to go around.

But we should really put this all into context.

Real Madrid won La Liga and the Champions League last year. It was a good year. It might have even exceeded expectations, which are to win at least one of those trophies and contend for the other, at minimum.

David Beckham, who’d won it all at Manchester United when he moved to the Spanish capital, was blown away by the standards at Madrid. This is an outfit where losing any game, at any point of the season, in any competition, is completely unacceptable. And there’s been some losing of late.

Last weekend, they lost the Copa del Rey final to Barcelona. Intolerable. Eleven days before that, they lost their Champions League semifinal to Arsenal. Deplorable. In January, they lost the Supercopa de Espana to, extra disgracefully, Barcelona.

That said, the supporters haven’t quit on the season. Win out and they only need the slightest wobble from the Catalans to claim the title.

It’s the press that’s given up.

The country has a half dozen sports dailies and even more TV and radio programs, many of which are unapologetically partisan regarding Real Madrid. They’ll cheer from the media gallery and even serve as a club mouthpiece when things are good. When things are bad they’ll hiss, bay or bellow depending on what’s going on. They can be absolutely vicious.

But they’re not stupid. Eventually, after blaming this person or that, or attacking the match tactics, recruitment strategy or off-field distractions, they’ll typically arrive at the right conclusion.

Late last month Alfredo Relano, the dean of Spanish sportswriting, correctly observed in AS that this Real Madrid team lacks courage, has no precision and, most importantly, has been badly built. Writing in Marca, Ruben Jimenez soberly conceded that the squad’s many problems were rooted in careless planning.

It was a not-so-subtle dig at the acquisition of Kylian Mbappé.

While the France forward has notched an impressive 34 goals this term, he’s also upset the balance that was so integral to last season’s successes. Vinicius Junior isn’t scoring at quite the same clip; Rodrygo isn’t nearly as effective; Jude Bellingham is a shadow of the world-class midfielder who took La Liga by storm in 2023-24.

Instead of signing Mbappé, who is nevertheless a top-five player in the world, the consensus is that Madrid would’ve been better off replacing Toni Kroos in the centre of the park and strengthening the back-line.

That they opted for the glamour and shirt sales of Mbappé is down to club president Florentino Perez, who might be the only figure who understands that Real Madrid don’t have to win every year to make a whole lot of money. Of course, that doesn’t mean he won’t play his own blame games when his plans go awry.

The club, through its media arm Real Madrid TV, meticulously analyzes referees at the best of times, and lately their criticism has been blistering.

Upon learning the slate of referees for the upcoming round of matches, which includes Madrid’s home contest against Celta Vigo (7 a.m., Sunday, TSN 4), the channel railed against the official assigned to them as being responsible for “the biggest refereeing scandal in recent times.” What he did was disallow a Bellingham goal that came after the final whistle.

In February, Perez went so far as to send a letter to La Liga’s authorities in which he claimed “decisions against Real Madrid have reached a level of manipulation and adulteration… which can no longer be ignored.”

The situation has become so vitriolic that the referee for the Copa del Rey final nearly broke down when describing the abuses directed at his family — and that was before Real Madrid defender Antonio Rudiger was given a six-match ban for throwing an ice cube at him from the bench.

Given the threats to in-game and public safety one almost wishes Madrid would win comfortably against Celta, if only to lower the temperature.

But that’s exactly the problem, and exactly what Los Blancos want.

Real Madrid may have enjoyed a bit of quiet on Thursday, but it was more a reprieve for everyone else. It’s gotten a whole lot noisier since, and it’s likely the volume will continue to squelch until the summer.

In the meantime, all we can do is plug our ears, stay out of Rudiger’s throwing range and maybe hope the basketball team is thumped by Valencia this weekend.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

jerradpeters.bsky.social