The defining moment in a manager’s tenure rarely comes in his 12th game with the team, but life at Real Madrid moves faster than it does at just about any other European club.
It doesn’t help that Rafa Benitez’s tenure at the Santiago Bernabeu has gone almost exactly how his myriad detractors predicted it would.
This Saturday’s Clasico, the first meeting between Real and Barcelona this season, could very well seal Benitez’s fate. That might sound crazy, but in a strictly mathematical sense it’s not.
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Win and Madrid goes level on points with Barca at the top of the La Liga table; lose and the Catalan club takes a commanding six-point lead. Even a draw would look bad on Benitez. Sure, the gap between the two teams would only be three points, but the league was settled by only two points in 20014-15, and three the year before.
The harbinger of doom for Real is its 3-2 loss to Sevilla before the international break. That was the team’s first loss of the campaign, but you could see it coming from a mile away.
Madrid has been a tactical nightmare under Benitez. He values possession over all other metrics, but offers no clear plan to get the ball from the middle of the field into the 18-yard box. His reputation as a defensive mastermind has been severely tested in games where speedy wingers have cut the backline to shreds.
In the midfield, he’s clearly unsure of how to use Toni Kroos, the team’s most reliable player under Carlo Ancelotti, and Luka Modric has been overworked as a result.
Real’s best player has been the one Florentino Perez nearly discarded like bad milk on transfer deadline day in September: goalkeeper Keylor Navas. And when your ‘keeper is your best player, it’s a clear sign something isn’t clicking.
But to pin all of Madrid’s problems on Benitez would be slightly unfair. This is still the most expensive collection of footballers ever assembled, and some of the responsibility falls on their shoulders.
The problems start at the top, where Karim Benzema and Gareth Bale have battled injuries, while Cristiano Ronaldo has ranged from ineffective to uninterested in more than half of Real’s matches. Ronaldo may be averaging a goal per game, but that is largely thanks to a five-goal effort against Espanyol in early September. Whether he is in decline or upset over his current role, his sour body language is affecting his team’s performance.
Casemiro is the best (only?) defensive midfielder Madrid has fielded since Xabi Alonso’s departure, but he is still young and loses track of the play, exposing a defence that has had its own issues—Dani Carjaval, Sergio Ramos and Pepe’s injuries, and Rafael Varane’s regression.
To top it all off, James Rodriguez was—until the second half of the Sevilla game—missing through injury for more than two months. The Columbian last year was at first criticized for not being Angel Di Maria, then later lauded when he revealed himself to be an even more surgical creator and finisher. His ability to stay healthy through the last two thirds of the season will be critical to whatever hope Real has of winning La Liga or the Champions League. That is, of course, if James and Benitez can put an escalating public feud behind them.
Barcelona, meanwhile, lost Lionel Messi to a knee injury on Sept. 26. A defeat in the team’s next match, also to Sevilla, turned out to be a small blip in the road. Barca won its next six games, four in La Liga and two in the Champions League. More important, Neymar and Luis Suarez have established themselves as perhaps the most dangerous attacking duo in the world in Messi’s absence. Impressively, they have combined to score the team’s last 19 goals.
Oh, and Messi will appear in some for or another in Saurday’s Clasico in Madrid.
One team is clearly in the ascendency, the other is flailing for answers and consistency as their crucial matchup looms.
“I think we were a bit static, although I can’t explain why,” an injured, frustrated Sergio Ramos said after Real’s loss to Sevillla. “League titles are won by the finest of margins and we lost three very important points. We need to change our mentality.”
Ramos probably didn’t realize he was indicting his manager when he made the last point, but there is a lot of truth in there. Lose El Clasico and that change in mentality could arrive a lot sooner than Perez would have hoped.