After a damaging LaLiga loss, this is how Arbeloa can save his Real Madrid job
After Los Blancos’ title hopes took a major blow in Mallorca, Álvaro Arbeloa faces a fight to remain on the Madrid bench next season.
Real Madrid’s loss in Mallorca, coupled with Barcelona’s subsequent win over Atlético, has left Álvaro Arbeloa in a difficult spot. His future on the Madrid bench hangs in the balance with the real possibility of finishing the season without a trophy. Their chances of winning LaLiga are slim, and everything now hinges on the Champions League. It’s obvious that his future depends heavily on what the team can do first against Bayern Munich and then - an even tougher challenge - in a potential matchup with either Paris Saint-Germain or Liverpool. The picture would look very different for the coach had he been able to fight for the domestic title until the end.
Madrid momentum curbed at San Moix
The match in Mallorca was a cold dose of reality that halted the positive momentum Arbeloa had managed to build. Once again - something the board also noticed - the team looked flat, lacking spark and intensity, precisely at the moment when Madrid couldn’t afford a slip-up. In the aftermath, the club’s hierarchy has been debating whether it was the right move to bench Vinícius Júnior or to unexpectedly start academy players. That said, Manuel Ángel delivered a more than respectable performance, given how delicate the situation was.
The numbers do little to help Arbeloa’s case with the first team. Mallorca handed him his fifth defeat in 18 matches (alongside 13 wins). Xabi Alonso, for instance, also lost five… but in 28 games (20 wins and three draws). And with that negative trend, Arbeloa now enters an uncomfortable chapter in the club’s history. He’s already among the coaches with the most defeats at the start of their tenure. In their first 18 games, Keeping and Molowny lost eight, Del Bosque seven, Albéniz, Scarone, Hiddink, Amancio and Arsenio six, and Kinké, Ipiña and now Arbeloa five.
There’s another statistic that hasn’t gone unnoticed during Arbeloa’s time in charge: the limited impact his in-game decisions have had on results - especially in matches where things turned ugly after conceding first. His Madrid has managed to come from behind in just two of seven such games: against Benfica (2-1) and Atlético (3-2). In the other five, they lost after falling behind: Albacete (3-2), Benfica (4-2), Osasuna (2-1), Getafe (1-0) and Mallorca (2-1).
The coach repeatedly insists on taking full responsibility after every defeat. It happened again at Son Moix: “I’m the one who makes the decisions, who sets the lineup, who makes the substitutions, who chooses how we play, and this defeat belongs entirely to the Real Madrid coach.” Although this time he did point a finger at a player - Eduardo Camavinga - without explicitly naming him. And that was a first. “One lapse in organization and they score on you,” Arbeloa said. “Here, if you switch off for a moment, if you don’t adjust properly, if you lose your mark and don’t track it, it costs you a goal.”
Within the club, there has always been a high degree of confidence in the work Arbeloa could do with the squad. His locker-room management is highly valued - stabilizing the atmosphere around key players like Vinícius, Jude Bellingham and Fede Valverde, and giving meaningful opportunities to many academy players, especially following the rise of Thiago Pitarch. But the defeat at Son Moix has frozen all that positive momentum Arbeloa had managed to generate after a rocky start - momentum that was also fueled by the team’s elimination of Manchester City in the Champions League round of 16. And now it seems, once again, that the Champions League will be the competition that ultimately opens or closes the door on Arbeloa’s future at Real Madrid.
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