A defeat that calls everything into question

Real Madrid have entered a dangerous stretch, one in which confusion has exposed several players and, above all, Xabi Alonso, who against Celta proved unable to stir his side until the referee did – the same referee who jolted them from the torpor they carried into the game. It all lays bare a team now four points behind Barcelona, when just five games ago they were five ahead.

If the three goals at San Mamés had offered a kind of lifeline and a hint of optimism, that truce lasted only four days. The team were stripped bare again, left without a single convincing argument to explain a defeat that stings more than it may seem, for both the players and the coaching staff.

Just days ago we noted that Xabi Alonso’s real test at Real Madrid would come after the Supercopa, but games like the one played on a slick Bernabéu pitch on Sunday night tend to leave a mark. And they do so with Manchester City landing in Madrid in seventy-two hours.

Against Celta, the same apathy resurfaced – the same reluctance to run. There was zero competitive tension during the first 65 minutes, as if the story had nothing to do with them, and a coach who lacked answers beyond sending on Rodrygo first and Gonzalo later. Little more.

The surge sparked by Alejandro Quintero through a series of disputed decisions allowed Madrid to mask things slightly, with particular credit to Tchouameni and Vinicius. They were the only ones to emerge with any credit from a mediocre night that exposed Real Madrid’s shortcomings, a squad battered by injuries and, after Sunday, by expulsions as well.

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