Real Madrid supporters have made up their minds on who is responsible for a forgettable season. A massive survey points fingers at the board, multiple players, and the manager.
The abyss of a trophyless season looms over Real Madrid after a past campaign in which only two minor trophies were won (the European Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup). And this meager haul, at a club like the White one, has only one name: crisis.
Wednesday’s loss in Munich, surely undeserved, ended the Champions League dream, always the great objective of the 15-time European champion. Fans’ doubts in the MARCA.com mega-survey, with nearly 150,000 participants, extend to all areas of the club.
From the board, blamed for flawed squad planning, to the coach, Alvaro Arbeloa, to several members of the squad whose performance has, in many cases, been below what is required.
As for the players, the most singled out is Camavinga, the victim of a surreal expulsion in Munich, a decision that proved decisive for his team’s eventual defeat. But it is striking that 8% of users, nearly 50,000 votes, single out Vinicius, protagonist of an irregular season in which he has alternated good matches with clearly improvable performances, such as Wednesday’s.
The players best rated by fans are Courtois, Valverde, and Guler, with Mbappe and Bellingham, the other two big stars of the squad, inspiring more confidence than Vinicius.
Regarding Arbeloa, 73% bet against the coach’s continuity, under whose command the team has let the Copa, Champions, and probably also the League slip away. Despite Madrid’s good image against Bayern and City, the European campaign is considered bad by 50% of our survey participants, who also do not exonerate the coach from the elimination: 67% consider him directly responsible for it.
Even so, the figure of Arbeloa, and also that of Xabi Alonso, are excluded from the distribution of responsibilities for Madrid’s overall bad season. In this sense, users of our website point mainly to the club for the planning of the season: 45% and more than 50,000 votes opt for this option.
The players also share responsibility, which is not small for the fans. 39% point to the players who caused the firing of Xabi Alonso, with Vinicius again in the spotlight after his snub to the Basque coach in the first La Liga classic of the season, when Madrid was leading the standings with authority. 15% point to the entire squad for not being up to par, and only 1% blame both Xabi and Arbeloa.
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