Real Madrid ready for a shake up
What changes will occur at Real Madrid if Jose Mourinho does decide to leave in the summer? He will no doubt be disappointed that his team have fallen at the semi-final stage of the Champions League once again, especially as he was brought in with the specific aim of leading Madrid back to the top of the European game. With recent comments and interviews indicating that he is on his way out of the Spanish capital, speculation has already begun about the future of this historic club.
When Gabriel Clarke interviewed Jose Mourinho immediately after the second leg match against Borussia Dortmund, he asked whether the Portuguese ‘special one’ would still be at the Santiago Bernabeu for 2013/2014. His instant response was “Perhaps not” and he also suggested that he would like to be “Where people love me to be”, sparking the rumour mill into overdrive that a return to Chelsea could be on the cards.
After managing to wrestle back the Spanish league title from Barcelona last year and eventually working out how to beat the Catalan giants, the signs of progression were there for all to see and fans were confident that the long wait for Champions League glory could finally end. Ever since Zinedine Zidane scored a magical volley in the 2002 final against Bayer Leverkusen at Hampden Park they have failed to lift the trophy since. For a club of this stature it is unacceptable to go more than ten years with only domestic honours to show.
When Florentino Perez returned as president of the club in 2009 he promised huge investment and certainly delivered on this with the immediate acquisitions of Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo. His other major decision was appointing a world class coach to mould a collection of superstars into a team and he attracted Mourinho to the post in May 2010, after the tactician had just led Inter Milan to a historic treble, including a 2-0 Champions League final victory over Bayern Munich.
Three seasons on and a semi-final appearance each year in Europe’s toughest competition would for most clubs be considered an achievement in itself, but in Madrid there are no prizes for getting close to winning and certainly no pats on the back from an extremely demanding fan base. Mourinho himself has an extremely poor relationship with the Spanish media and often allows his assistant, Aitor Karanka, to face the questions after league matches. He has grown tired of their criticism and feels that he has been unfairly judged ever since arriving in the capital. With the latest setback against Dortmund, combined with losing La Liga to Barcelona and public disagreements with star players such as Iker Casillas and Sergio Ramos, now seems like the right time to move on to pastures new. History suggests that Mourinho never stays more than this period of time anyway, regardless of the success he has. Florentino Perez must look at possible candidates for perhaps the most stressful and pressurised job in football.
Carlo Ancelotti seems to be the man favoured to take the reins, although the current PSG manager may want to continue with the project that the French side’s owners have invested in. They are now part of the rich elite of world football and certainly plan on spending big this summer in an effort to fortify their squad. There is also the matter of the playing personnel currently contracted to ‘Los Merengues’, as they will attempt to sell off those surplus to requirement to allow some money to fund new signings. Higuian, Coentrao and Kaka are already rumoured to be on the exit list, with Lewandowski apparently wanted to lead the attack for next season. Whoever does manage the club, whether Mourinho or someone else, the pressure to win the Champions League is only going to intensify as the years go by and neither the fans, nor the president, will be content until they can once again lift the famous trophy.
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