Real Madrid Galacticos

Real Madrid behind Barcelona: My view

Posted on 23. Jan, 2010 by Borris Becker in General

Real Madrid is the best club in club football history, I think you all know this, I know this and hell, FIFA knows it as well ( because that is the only reason why they awarded Real Madrid with the “BEST CLUB OF 20th CENTURY” award) but right now, nowhere will you find any evidence nor any trail to hint that Real Madrid is the best football club in the world and lets be fair over here, Real Madrid is not the best club in the world right now.

The likes of Barcelona and Manchester United have over taken Real Madrid as far as on field performances go. As far as marketing side is concerned, they both are catching up with Real Madrid and fast. Barcelona are just getting over winning the first ever sextuple by ANY club, not just any Spanish club and Manchester United are loaded with money after their sale of Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid for 80 million pounds or so.

Last week’s performance against Athletico Bilbao (a match, Real Madrid SHOULD not COULD, have easily won, well atleast on paper) was not something which any Real Madrid fan would be proud of. An away lost to a tier 2 team and on worse, Barcelona won their match which widened the gap between Real Madrid and Barcelona at the top of the La liga table to 5 points which is a pretty hefty margin and from now on, it will be extremely difficult to catch Barcelona.

After 18nth week of La Liga, Barcelona are sitting at the top of the table with 46 points and Real Madrid are second with 41. That looks pretty OK but check this out. Valencia are sitting right below Real Madrid with 38 points which means that one slip up on part of Real Madrid could end up hurting us to the extent that Real Madrid would not be able to grab that automatic qualification for the Champions League next season.

Some would say that is just hypothetical, but I say, it is better to be safe than sorry. Barcelona are not going to let their form drop which obviously means that Real Madrid will have to step up their game and gel a lot quicker than Ricardo Kaka suggested some weeks ago (about 1 and a half seasons).

Right now, Barcelona are firing on all cylinders. They have looked the strongest side in Champions League and are definitely head and shoulders above the rest in La Liga (but on a good day, Real Madrid can at the least, match Barcelona), their club is going through a fantastic economic phase and generally, is pretty stable from an administrative point of view.

Coming back to La Liga. I think the major reason why Barcelona are so ahead of Real Madrid in terms of points (5 points is a lot of points) is because of the number of games Barcelona actually loose. If you look the the La Liga table a little closely, you will notice that  Barcelona have not lost a single game this season in La Liga whereas Real Madrid have lost 3 games which makes quite a difference. Barcelona always manage to scrap out a draw out of somewhere whenever they are not clicking and the other team is playing its best football. That to me makes a lot of difference.

Real Madrid have drawn fewer games then Barcelona (4 to 2 ) which tells me that whenever Real Madrid get behind in a match, they do not have the determination to fight for a win or at least a draw. We would have been only 2 points behind Barcelona had we drawn all the game we lost but only half a season has passed and there is a lot of football to be played.

Real Madrid have time to fix itself first and then wait for Barcelona to have  massive slip up if we want to get ahead. I always think of the margin the following way:

• We MUST win the game against Barcelona later in the season, that is a given. There is no point in winning the league if we cannot beat Barcelona at the Bernabeu.
• Given that we beat Barcelona, the point difference is actually 2 points which further means that we only need Barcelona to either loose one single game or draw twice to give us a chance to over take them. I think Real Madrid players have the quality and WILL have the motivation when they would know that Barcelona have slipped up to give Real Madrid the chance to get close to them and eventually overtake them.

Hope this releases some tension off some of our Real Madrid fans as it always helps me whenever I think about the situation of Real Madrid at the moment.

That is all for today and I look forward to the game against Malaga. HALA MADRID