Goodbye to the Zidane effect

Real Madrid stumbled again in this League, defeated by Levante at the Di Stéfano de Valdebebas (1-2), in what is the fourth game lost by the Whites in the League and the eighth so far this season. In the Spanish domestic tournament, his loss rate is 20%; in the overall course, it scales up to 25%. Inappropriate numbers for Madrid in the last decade, but which fit into the dynamics the team has entered since its golden stage ended with that victory in Kiev. After the return of Zidane to the bench, at the end of the 2018-19 academic year, the club trusted the figure of Marseille to start a new golden age, but nothing remains of that effect.

In his first stage at the helm of Real Madrid, heZidane's team lost 16 out of 149 games, with a stupendous percentage of less than 11% defeats; Since his return, there have already been 19 in only 90 games, which puts that percentage at 21%, practically double. All in all, he managed to save last season with a League-Super Cup double that was considered terrific given that the team's solvency was less and less.

This season there is still room for rectification, but the prospects are scary. The wound has deepened (Madrid has already lost more both in the league and overall in the season than in the entire past year) and the forecasts are as they are: Madrid are seven points behind Atleti in the league, with two more games than the rojiblancos, who are going for the title at a record pace. In the Cup, Madrid is already out, downed by a Second B at the first exchange. And the Champions League, the oasis in which Zidane's Madrid always took refuge, seems impossible today for a team that suffered the unspeakable to get into the second round, losing two games to Ukrainian Shakhtar and drawing at home to Borussia Dortmund.

Pending renewals, players who do not perform …

Zidane asked the club for diligence when it came to managing the renewals of the players who end their contract (Ramos, Modric and Lucas Vázquez), aware that having to negotiate their situations in the critical months of the season would detract from the focus of the game itself within the heads of the three, key pieces as they are in the coach's framework. Modric's is closed, although not signed; not so Ramos and Lucas, both in neutral.

And to Zidane, who in the past everything went well (hence that of the flower), now the coins teach him the cross to the minimum. He tried to rotate, but it was proven that Madrid's Plan B is not prepared for massive line-up changes; has not known how to fit (or have not known how to adapt) to the signings that the club brought him as Militao, Jovic, Odegaard and even Hazard. And not even the sporting and institutional bump that the eternal rival, Barcelona, ​​is going through, serves as a balm for a Madrid that wanders through the season with the only hope in the Champions League, a tournament that today seems like a chimera based on the team's performance. Although it would not be the first time that Madrid has struck the bell on European soil …