Following the defeat in El Clasico on Saturday, Real Madrid are now 14 points behind league leaders Barcelona. It seems that once again, Real Madrid title challenge has come to an early demise, Spain’s most successful club have won a measly 6 league titles since 2000. Below, I attempt to address the reasons why Madrid have struggled in La Liga in the modern era.
Reason 1 – Expectations
Last season, Zinedine Zidane led Real Madrid to their first La Liga title in five years. You would have to go back to the early 1980s to find as long a title drought. In fact since the golden era of the 1950s, Real Madrid have only ever gone five years without a title, a drought of which happened just twice in the 20th century.
I start my article with these statistics for much needed context, not to demonstrate the under performance of Madrid in the 21st century, but, the ridiculous dominance of Madrid in the previous century.
It would perhaps surprise some that my first reasoning as why Madrid have failed in Spain over the last 17 years is expectations being too high, but, I feel it is a big factor. Since the club’s third title in 1954, Real Madrid have broken record after record in Spain. In the 1960s, Los Blancos won eight La Liga titles out of the ten available. Real Madrid have won the league five times consecutively twice in their history (1960-1965 and 1985-1990). No club in Spain have won five La Ligas consecutively, let alone done it twice.
Real Madrid dominance in the past have inevitable shaped today’s expectations. If you were to split the last five decades of the 20th century into groups of 9 years, you would discover that Real Madrid won a half or more of the available Spanish titles in three of those five decades. While pointing out that Real Madrid past domination of La Liga was unprecedented, it is not the only factor.