Rafael Benitez heads for the Bernabéu exit as Cristiano Ronaldo joins the great Real Madrid protest
The end? Benitez's future at Real Madrid is already beginning to look bleakBy Oliver Brown, at the BernabeuFollowing Barcelona's comprehensive 4-0 win in La Liga, Florentino Perez's hand may be forced as reports emerge of Ronaldo's dressing-room politickingTwenty-four hours on, the mutinous murmurs had still to subside. So shattering was Real Madridâs 4-0 thrashing at the hands of Barcelonaâs aesthetes that Cristiano Ronaldo, whose relationship with manager Rafael BenĂÂtez appeared frayed beyond repair, reputedly told team-mates in the BernabĂ©u dressing room: âEither he goes, or I go.â
One needs no detailed instruction in the habits of Florentino PĂ©rez, who has worked his way through 13 coaches in 15 years, to know which option the notoriously impatient club president is more likely to take. But the blame for this mortifying result has fallen as much upon PĂ©rez as BenĂÂtez, and it was at the 68-year-old billionaire that Realâs restive supporters expressed their opprobrium, waving white placards in surrender after Luis SuĂĄrezâs second goal set the seal on a night of unmitigated anguish.
No team set up by BenĂÂtez, conservative to his core, are conditioned to lose 4-0 at home. Rather, it is PĂ©rezâs insistence that he sends out a starting XI studded with more stars than some constellations, while BenĂÂtez is left looking like the hapless fall-guy when it all goes as hideously wrong as it did here. Realâs fans, as they made clear by angrily chasing several VIP cars along Calle de Padre DamiĂĄn long after the final whistle, have grown sick of PĂ©rezâs perpetual revolution and his myopic obsession with marquee names. They recognise that a dismal run yielding just one La Liga title in seven years could soon become eight, now Barca have carved out a six-point lead that they scarcely look like relinquishing.
In the immediate aftermath, Realâs ruling junta sought to quell the insurrection as only they knew how, by playing club anthem Hala Madrid at deafening volume over the BernabĂ©u tannoy to drown out 80,000 piercing whistles of disdain. The spectacle, however, was even more powerful than the sound. Everywhere you turned, Real fans were fluttering white signs or white handkerchiefs in a quintessentially Spanish display of displeasure.
They also cheered Andrés Iniesta, an ageless inspiration for Barcelona, to the rafters when he was substituted with 12 minutes left. The applause was carefully calculated: they had offered a similarly effusive reaction to Ronaldinho a decade earlier, when the Brazilian orchestrated a 3-0 Barca triumph at Real. On both occasions, the rationale was the same, with conspicuous shows of admiration for the hated Catalan enemy designed to cause maximum embarrassment for Pérez and his board.
The playersâ verdicts mirrored the feeling of unease. Luka Modric, who alongside Toni Kroos had delivered one of the worst holding midfield performances in El ClĂĄsico history, was at a loss to explain himself. âI think we werenât on the pitch,â the Croatian said, bluntly. âWhen we are a team we are very good, but when we are not it is difficult.â Few conveyed this disunity as starkly as Ronaldo, who has never been so tepid in the all-white strip. There were moments when he seemed as if he would rather still be on the sofa with Jonathan Ross, promoting the latest film about his life, than doing anything that might save BenĂÂtezâs skin.
Realâs record goalscorer has made no secret of his distaste for the Spaniardâs containing tactics and delivered the type of listless turn that suggested he would lean on PĂ©rez to issue the P45 forms there and then.
The more fits of pique Ronaldo throws, the stronger the rumours that he will decamp to Paris St Germain or Manchester United become. His behaviour is unfair on BenĂÂtez, who is guilty of nothing more than trying to fashion a team in his own image despite constant pressure from above. The manager was explicitly asked whether he felt hamstrung by PĂ©rezâs demands â naturally, he denied it â given that at least two of his actions here suggested as much.
Firstly, he brought on Isco to replace James RodrĂÂguez, when the self-evident choice was to hook a dreadfully out-of-sorts Gareth Bale. With each match, the sense mounts that Bale, PĂ©rezâs ÂŁ86 million poster-child, must play at all costs, however fruitless his toil. Secondly, BenĂÂtez betrayed his instincts by leaving out Casemiro â the one player he had credited with lending a balance to this Real team â in favour of the superstars. The ensuing mismatch, as Modric and Kroos laboured pitifully in trying to unsettle a dazzling Barca midfield of Iniesta, Ivan Rakitic and Sergio Busquets, was a glaring indictment of PĂ©rezâs one-track philosophy.
If you wanted a reflection of Barcelonaâs effortless superiority, it came within three seconds of the kick-off, as Busquets befuddled Bale with the cutest little feint. It would prove the cue for a crushing demolition. SuĂĄrez teed off the rout by bending the ball into the far corner from Sergi Robertoâs visionary pass, before Neymar hared past Danilo with ease to squeeze a shot underneath Keylor Navas that doubled the lead.
The signature flourish belonged to Iniesta, feeding off some gorgeous interplay with Neymar and then rifling his strike hard and true beyond the hapless Navas. It fell to SuĂĄrez, aptly, to complete this act of elegant destruction, as he clipped his finish over the Real goalkeeperâs head. In all of these captivating passages of play, one could be forgiven for not noticing the reintroduction of a certain Lionel Messi. While Messi â all but guaranteed to win a fifth Ballon dâOr in January despite spending the past two months sidelined with injury, returned seamlessly to the fold, manager Luis Enrique was asked it would be difficult reintegrating him in the long term, when SuĂĄrez and Neymar have scored 20 of Barcelonaâs last 21 league goals.
âProblema de la hostia!â Enrique shot back. Roughly translated, this meant a âvery large problemâ, with a strong expletive thrown in. How the suffering BenĂÂtez must covet the luxury of such difficulties. His next two games, a dead Champions League rubber against Shakhtar Donetsk and a domestic trip to Eibar, afford scant chance of atonement. By then, the trigger-happy PĂ©rez could well have made the most pressing decision for him.
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