Football
Hurricane Conte: Real problems of Real Madrid
Ediale Kingsley analyses the present situation in Madrid.
Julen Lopetegui is probably planning a vacation as we speak. The sacked Real Madrid’s coach won’t be in a hurry to land another job. His contract with Real Madrid was more tempting than the aroma of the World Cup cuisine.
While Madrid will keep paying him Salary for nothing, Madrid will look for a Superstar coach they can pay for the job.
Madrid wants Antonio Conte. But Conte has his excesses and demands:
— Some senior players dear to Florentino Perez would not survive Hurricane Conte.
— Conte is demanding the role of a manager. Not the ceremonious head coach. This means he determines the key decision as to who to get and who to cut out starting from the January transfer window.
— Conte wants the kind of money that will cover for the $11m he will lose to the Chelsea board and that will also make him one of the top earning coaches in Europe.
— Conte wants a long term contract.
— Conte is not bending to any of Florentino Perez’s condition. In fact, it’s Conte that is bringing all the conditions.
And Florentino Perez doesn’t like to be in this situation.
Before Madrid went for Julen Lopetegui, this was how their choice looked like:
Antonio Conte, Mauricio Pochettino, Arsene Wenger, Joachim Low, Jorge Sampaoli, Maurizio Sarri, Massimiliano Allegri, Guti, Marcelino Garcia, Santiago Solari and Julen Lopetegui.
Since then a lot has happened. Conte has been free, Sarri has a job, Mauricio has a contract extension, the stocks of others aside, the upcoming managers, have fallen.
Conte was already one leg out of Chelsea, he was considered but his bad UCL records and 3-4-3 style was not what Madrid wanted.
Wenger had bad vibes hanging around his neck then. He was wanted time approached for the job, but he rejected it for the love of project-arsenal.
With all these difficult situations. Santiago Solari could have be made the official coach. He serves as interim now, by the Spanish football laws he can only do so for 15 days. In those 15 days he has a simple test before him. So simple that even if he scored 10/10 Madrid fans could still have a doubt about him.
In that 15 days (assuming he stays through it all before an official manager is unveiled) he will be in charge of games against:
— Melilla
— Valladolid
— Viktoria Plezen
— Celta Vigo
3 small teams and 1 average team.
Too weak a test.
But Madrid are in a fix as well. Time’s ticking. And the Madrid board either gets:
— Antonio Conte with his demands, or
— Arsene Wenger with his uncertainties (I think Wenger will also want to be in charge. He was in charge in Arsenal. He took several key decisions)
Or better still Madrid can just rely on their Youth Coaches like what happened with Zidane. Same thing happened with Pep, Tito…
They can have Santiago Solari (their Youth coach) assisted by Guti (their Under 19 coach).
At least until the end of the season. When they can then have a better bargain.
When Pep Guardiola was leaving Barcelona after dominating the football world for years. He did so out of necessity. Barca was fortunate and didn’t suffer like Real Madrid because:
— Barca had already made the style played by Guardiola an institution
— As Pep left Tito Vilanova, who was assistant coach to Pep from managing team B to also managing the first team, took over as coach
It was when ill health and finally death snapped Tito that Barca became a little unfortunate. Tata Martino stepped in. Nothing was won under him. But Barca was second runner up. It wasn’t as bad as the current Real Madrid case and so he didn’t get sacked before the end of the season.
Real Madrid have a different situation at hand.