Seven reasons Real Madrid are considering sacking Zinedine Zidane

Zinedine Zidane is in the eye of the storm. Madrid fans are sunken after their collapse at Alcoyano and elimination from two cups in five days. The team has won one in five. Bad results and bad play make it worse. Here are the reasons Madrid are considering binning Zizou.

SIGNINGS

Florentino Perez has brought in 13 players since Madrid won their 13th Champions League in May 2018. Zidane has only used three of these regularly - Courtois, Mendy and Hazard (when fit). Jovic, Brahim and Kubo are gone, along with Reguilon from the B team, while the other seven are subs and barely get chances. Madrid have spent 558.5 million euros but 315.5m of that is not being used by the Frenchman.

STYLE ENDED IN KIEV

With Cristiano Ronaldo leaving, followed by Zidane, the club’s style ended. They’ve gone from playing vertically to horizontally. They generally don’t have good players or moves in the final third and need Benzema’s individual genius to find the net. Their goalscoring stats are the worst of this century.

NO TRANSITION

Madrid don’t seem to have much of a plan beyond playing the old guard. The new players have not been able to earn places in the team.

DENIAL

From being an empathic technician, Zidane has become elusive, sullen and with a sharp tooth when it comes to the press. He takes the defeats and the ridicules but does not recognise the failures. He has panicked and denies all his mistakes, just replying: "That's what you say,” to people who ask about them. He is always satisfied with the players and his own work, but underestimates external opinions: "Being eliminated by Alcoyano is not a failure,” he claimed. Or after Jovic's departure, saying that: “It's easy to say that when a player leaves it's my fault. The fault is not of the coach.”

ATMOSPHERE GONE

He has managed to divide the dressing room and he doesn't even talk to the substitutes anymore. He has cut communication with those who do not play. The distances are increasingly wide between those who play and those who do not. The consequence is that the substitutes begin to resign and ask to be released en masse (Odegaard, Jovic, Militao…). This is something unheard of at Real Madrid, a team which everyone wants to play for.

LIVING OFF RESPECT

In five days he has lost two consecutive titles. The last league he won was more due to Barça's problems than due to their own merits, favoured by the stoppage caused by the coronavirus. He lives off the respect he earned with the nine titles he achieved in his first period at the club, but since he returned he has already lost five titles out of seven: 1 Champions League, 1 League, 2 Cups and 1 Spanish Super Cup.

RIDICULE

Madridismo has had enough of Zidane and is already pointing to the president as being guilty for the deterioration. They accuse Perez of not having fired him for too long, of not detecting that Zidane’s cycle was finished. Of turning his back on a situation of football decline. The coronavirus is saving them from suffering a clear and brutal judgment in front of the Bernabéu. If this continues, Florentino Pérez will end up being the target of a fan base that sees him more focused on building a stadium that leaves his name on it for posterity than on worrying about the team's sporting drift.

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