Madrid sack Capello, the fools…
Just eleven days after winning their 30th Spanish league title, Real Madrid have announced that Fabio Capello will not continue as first team coach next season. Madrid’s board of directors met at lunchtime today to finalize their decision.
It is difficult to understand how any club can get rid of their manager/coach after winning the league, but apparently the move to oust Capello started weeks ago.
President Ramon Calderon never wanted Capello in the first place, it was his Sporting Director, Pedja Mijatovic, who last summer persuaded Calderon that Capello was the man Madrid needed to end their three year spell without a trophy. Madrid received a lot of criticism throughout the season for their poor style of play and their lack of attacking flair, and nobody would have been surprised had Capello gone after losing to Bayern Munich in the Champions League back in February, when Madrid were five points behind Barça in the league.
Calderon found the criticism hard to take and six weeks ago he told Mijatovic that either Capello had to go or it would be Mijatovic himself who would be asked to leave. Since then Madrid have been searching for a substitute. Calderon’s choice, and number one contender for the post, Bernd Schuster took his first coaching position in Spain in 2004 when he became coach at Levante; the following year he moved to Getafe where he still has one year of his contract to run.
Schuster reportedly has a get out clause in his contract which says he can leave Getafe in exchange for €1million. Mijatovic is supposed to prefer Michael Laudrup as coach, but it seems his lack of top-level coaching experience will count against him. Other possible options who have been mentioned in Spain are Ronald Koeman and Arsene Wenger, though it seems highly unlikely that either would be persuaded.
Roberto Carlos, speaking from Turkey where he will now play for Fenerbahce, was critical of his ex-bosses at Madrid. “The treatment that some gave Beckham and me really annoyed me.” For Capello, he only had praise “I cann’t believe that they are looking for a sustitute after winning the league.”
Personally, I can only think of one other case of a club sacking their manager after winning the league, and that was back in 2003 when Madrid last won the league. Vicente del Bosque was then shown the door by ex-president, Florentino Perez, and what a mistake that was.
Fabio Capello was the main reason Madrid won the league, it took time, but he instilled his gritty character into the team which was capable of taking 31 points from the last 12 games of the season. He knew it was right to sell Ronaldo and trust in Ruud van Nistlerooy. He wasn’t scared to drop Beckham and in the end this may have been the cause of Beckham’s excellent reaction in the last four months. The fans have been won over, but the board have not.
It remains to be seen if Schuster has arrived to an agreement or not, but I suspect he has. It is still very hard to understand why Madrid have done this, just as they were getting back to their winning ways.
Nig writes at FCBNews.com
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SL reader ‘vazoo’ writes in:
How would it be to be in Capello’s shoes now?
- 7 Serie A titles
– 4 in first 5 years as Manager at AC Milan
– 2 with Juventus (had he a hand in the shady dealings? - one can only speculate)
– 1 with AS Roma - their only one in last couple of decades and one of three in their entire club history
- Two Premiera Liga titles in two stints spread over a decade (heartfelt thanks to barca for the second one)…
And to add to that 1 Champions league
End result
- Hated by Roma Fans
- Kicked out twice by Madrid right after winning the league for them
- Del Peiro, Cassano, Totti, Ronaldo and Beckham (?) all apparently share a dislike for him, to put it mildly….
- The only manager (correct me if I’m wrong here) to have won the league title with each and every club he has managed
I admit that his preference to resort to defensive style of play hasn’t won him many admirers. His relations with key/star players haven’t been top notch either but then which good manager has not had his share of skirmishes with ’star’ players… It’s his quality of acknowledging his mistake and rectifying it (the recent Beckham saga) that speaks volumes about his ability as a manager…
The facts clearly establish him as one of the top managers in the last couple of decades - 9 league titles in 17 odd years - and yet are now out of a job…
Maybe Newcastle should have approached him while targeting the premiership within 3 years
The bosses that run Real Madrid will never learn. If nothing, Capello managed to stabilize the midfield and defence(to a certain extend) after 3 years. His purchases gave full returns(Reyes, Diarra,RVN, Higuain) and still the idiots sack him. But then that is Madrid’s history, and why is anyone surprised? Barca fans, rejoice…………
PS. all said and done, Capello was the only one who managed to rein in the colossal egos that lodge in the Barnabau dressing rooms, his successor be prepared.
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I cannot understand how managers go to coach R. Madrid, where, whatever they do, they get sacked
Good point Ron. And I don’t get why players want to go there?!
A player who is essential for one manager may find himself surplus to requirements a couple of months later!!
Haha! Barca fans enjoy this so much
And yes it’s come to be expected now every season at Madrid. The annual coaching change. And didn’t Del Bosque win the Champions League and then he was sacked? Can anyone name all the coaches since Del Bosque?
They won’t learn. Sack a winning coach.
Whos more retarded, perez or calderon?
Please…Capello had little to do with Madrid’s success this season. Whatever kind of defense-minded manager he claims to be, Madrid’s defense was suspect for much of the season–even with the addition of Cannavaro.
It’s ridiculous to state he somehow let go of Ronaldo to let Ruud shine–Ruud was already shining, Ronaldo was getting fatter. It’s just as ridiculous to suggest that his benching of Becks was a brilliant maneuver that led to the fine finish.
I couldn’t…wait, actually I could believe that Madrid was pathetic enough to bring in one of the faces of the Italian match-fixing scandal before the smoke had begun to clear. I don’t think they’re getting rid of him because of this connection, but if I were running the team I wouldn’t want such shady characters prancing around.
That said, I’m expecting Tom Cruise to step into his shoes anytime.
cbbennett your comments make no sense. The match fixing scandal was about the club officials(not the manager or coach) putting certain referees who are known to favour some teams for certain matches. I dont see how Capello was ever involved. If the defence sucked even after capello came in, it was because it was really bad but he improved it. Agreed he didnt win it, barca gifted it to them, but he made some substitutions in the last few matches which really turned the match in real’s favour. Are you saying that was pure luck? If so, no team should dispose a coach so gallantly gifted by good fortune………….
They do this time and time again, I don’t understand why the Madrid head honchos don’t look for any sort of continuity, it’s absurd. The team showed signs of solidarity and grittiness in increasing effect towards the end of the season when they finished champions, so why they opt to sack Capello is beyond me. Sure, the first half of the season was dismal with some very boring football being played but all of that changed post January.
I still don’t think this was as stupid as sacking Del Bosque but it’s right up there with it. Anyone who takes that seat now (schuster included) will have to keep an eye over his shoulder and that is never the ideal environment to work in
@ sherwin: off hand, i remember camacho, vanderlei luxemburgo and ramon lopez whatever…i couldn’t help sneak a quick look at wikipedia to find the other one was a certain assistant manager at man utd!
No, my point is that it takes…”interesting” judgment to pick the manager of a team at the center of a huge match-fixing scandal. Yes, Capello resigned and has not been implicated, but it was a call I wouldn’t have made.
Capello improved the defense? Arguably, but not convincingly so. Look at the numbers: in the 2006/2007 La Liga season, Madrid gave up 40 goals (66 for, 40 against); the year before Madrid gave up 40 goals (70 for, 40 against). In the 2006/2007 Champions League, Madrid gave up 12 goals in 8 games (18 for, 12 against). The year before in CL, Madrid gave up 9 goals in 8 games (10 for, 9 against).
Sure, numbers don’t tell the entire story, but if you want to give Capello credit, support the argument with something…something other than “he’s got a great history.” Yes he does. No, it wasn’t just luck, but Barca helped and Ruud and Becks did a lot.
cbbennet you are being a hypocrite,their is no way a team changes 4-5 coaches over a period of 4 years and you say you support the move.Thats just stupid on your part.Madrid never gave any of the previous coaches time to settle in,hardly any coach can join a team and within the first season win the league.And you keep saying barca handed the league to them,thats rubbish,if i remember barca lost at the bernabeau 2-0 and were loosing at the new camp to Madrid if it wasn’t for that lying cheat messi,that shows madrid were a beter side this season.And the president is a very very stupid man to have let go of the one coach in the world who would come to a team that had been without form for 4 years and bring such discipline and class to madrid that they had lost.I think the players have respect for the man and i think whoever comes in will have a horrid time at madrid.
What they needed was not a coach change over it ws a board make over.
I would like to see Calderon’s wife and tell her i’m very sorry that she has a fool for a husband.What are the stakeholders doing,sack Calderon.
This is not the first time Real have done this, and unfortunately it won’t be the last. Heynckes was sacked after bringing a European cup, Antic was sacked despite having won 70% of matches and leading Real to an 8 point advantage in the league, before Luxemburgo was sacked not long after taking Real to the greatest winning streak in their history.
That said, I don’t believe Capello was the man to re-establish Real in the long term. They need a younger man with new ideas and an entirely new transfer policy (see my article on the dramatic lack of personnel at the club!). Schuster to me seems to fit the bill. As for Laudrup, I fear he’ll go the same way Di Stefano did at the club.
What happened to loyalty and gratitude? If he got bad results, I could have understood. But he didn’t. In actual fact, he dethrowned the “mightiest” team in Europe…and this is the thanks he get?
Isn’t this the same that happened to Deschamps at juve?
I just feel sorry for the next coach of Real. I can only imagine the amount of pressure that he’ll be under.
What beothers me a bit is…
If the club shows this much loyalty towards their manager (who brought them success), then how much loyalty will they show toward the common fan (yet we are so fanatical over them). Don’t tell me bull about they fired him because of the fans…we all know its ot the case…its about staying in power, and a vote of confidence.
Abseloutely ridiculous!
This is why it has took them so long to win a trophy in the first place! Real Madrid are too big for there own boots! There is no stability at that club, as soon as they get a manager with a bit of common sense that wants to run things properly they just get rid of them because the board want to meddle and control the team.
There is talk of them trying to poach Arsene Wenger but I don’t think he’s that stupid, At Arsenal he’s got a club that has let him control affairs and has had the freedom to do things his own way, nurturing talent, and moulding teams. If Wenger went to Madrid you would hope that they would let him do tings like this in his own way. But all you have to do is look at the history of Madrid just over the last 5 years. They sacked one manager because he wanted the ‘Galactico’s’ to start training properly becauase they were not fit enough, then they wonder why they don’t win anything?
Capello is a top manager, in one year he took a team that really isn’t good enough to their first title in ages!
It wouldn’t matter Wenger, Mourinho or even Ferguson its just not worth a top manager risking his reputation when he’s never going to get any backing, even if he wins things!
This only goes to show that at Real it’s not about football, the style of play, or even trophies. It’s only about signing “big” players and coaches. It seems to me that as far as they are concerned there is no need for a season at all, they would be happy if they could only parade new signings all year long and say how a big club they are all the time. But Real is not a big club, it’s only a rich club. Imagine what would other people do if they had that amount of money at their disposal. I for one am certain that I would make a far better team with all that loot laying around. I pitty the fools who support that farce of a football club, and there seem to be many.
@iqnadirshah - wtf do u mean by Barca gifted the title to Real?? Real won it fair and square…dint resort to cheating (a la Messi)…time and again came back frm the dead to win their matches…while Barca couldnt do that. Real won it coz they played better, had much more desire to win it and never gave up.
Real played better, I’m not saying they dont deserve the credit, but barca had at one point an 8 point lead(i think that was
over real which they let slipped away, thats all. Its a figure of speech man, relax. As for cheating and influence, no has better influence than real, just look at how robinho was told to play for his club rather than his country. In the end, Real was the better team throughout the entire season,they had much more tenacity so they won. But what next?
How can I be a hypocrite about something I haven’t discussed? I never mentioned my views about Madrid’s unwillingness to let coaches settle before sending them off to their next job. In that sense, I think Capello was unfortunate.
I never said Barca did 100% of the work for Madrid, but they did have several poor results in the second half of the season (two draws to Betis, another to Osasuna, Espanyol, etc.). They had a chance to close the door on Madrid but didn’t. That’s football.
As for the Hand of Messi, it was a sad display and there is no defending it. Nevertheless, on the penultimate matchday with a chance to overtake your hated rival (after letting them back into the race), Barca should have summoned a better performance.
If there is anything with substance to add (i.e. supported by more than rhetoric), feel free.
They are the same idiots who let Fernando Redondo and Makelele leave. Since then their game has gone to dogs.
This Caledron’s predecessor Pirez called Makelele names in terms of technique. Mr Caledron re-enacts the scene and attacks Beckham. Now they want him back, why coz they realized that he can not only sell T Shirts but also create goals.
Can they hold on to anything good?
The motto “Successful coaches are fired to achieve greater heights.”
May be some championship on Mars for they had achieved everything that was there on offer on earth.
Its pretty funny seing a Barcelona support comment on something he obviously has no idea about. You go on to claim that Ramon Caldron never wanted Fabio Capello which isn’t true, Capello lost the faith of the management due to his defensive minded tavtics and the fact that they Bernabeu wants to see more attacking minded football.
2. You go on to claim that Mijatovic perfers Laudrup, again something which is not true. Where you get all of this is beyond me. perhaps you should stick writing something you know about rather then trying to taking shots at Madrid and misinforming people.
After planting the seed and watering it year-round, other person will reap and show to people that he is the one responsible for the growth and be thankful for the “enthusiastic” fruit. Poor Capello.
Pity Real Madrid.Schuster is also a defensive coach, based on records. he’s an attacker as a player though but as manager, nope. arsene wenger is not stupid enough to bite calderon’s bait and jose “the special one” is bright enough to see his dark life in real madrid and he will not go there. he is following the footstep of harry potter when it comes to real madrid. And Schuster is idiot enough to take the job.
It seems that the perfect manager for real madrid is Albus Dumbledore.they need a magician not a tactician.If Dumbledore is not available, they can get the services of George W. Bush, surely he’s an attack-minded person.
anyways, i will still love real madrid as long as i live.