As Real Madrid bask in the failure of the 2025/26 season and a 2-0 Clasico defeat that not only officially hands the title to rivals Barcelona, who are everything Real are not as a team this year, but it also hits home just how far the Merengues have fallen.
Alvaro Arbeloa is the latest scapegoat, but, like Xabi Alonso before him, he stood no chance with all the egoes and the controversy in the dressing room. And while people pine for Alonso and hate on the club for picking the players over Alonso, every bit of the lovefest for any manager other than Carlo Ancelotti feels like a slap in the face.
Because when you actually account for the product on the pitch and the fact that Barcelona and the others were better this year than last year, Ancelotti's 2024/25 season looks much more impressive. The same egoes and problems - especially Kylian Mbappe - were still there in 2024/25, and Ancelotti did not even have new additions in the summer defensively to help him.
Carlo Ancelotti was wronged
We never heard a peep about how crazy things were, though, because Ancelotti was such a brilliant man and manager He kept everyone on the good side and even stopped the media from dragging everyone for how bad they were. Ancelotti suffered the most from this ungrateful, boorish fanbase and bloodthirsty media because he fell on his sword all alone so that none of the players who deserved it had to. The reality is that a lot of these players were just as selfish, just as lazy defensively, and just as disappointing in 2024/25, hence why they went trophyless.
Yet the Real Madrid fans and even the club itself cannot seem to understand how good they had it with Carlo Ancelotti and remain ungrateful to one of their greatest ever manageres to this day. The man who brought them La Decima and still more Champions Leagues in this current decade was discarded like the last bit of spoiled milk in the bottom of the carton, whereas Alonso, who achieved nothing with the club and tore the locker room further apart with his Draconian style, is praised as a hero.
Alonso did not do a good job of managing Real Madrid. Yes, the players were spoiled and failed him, but he failed them and the club, too, and whereas Alvaro Arbeloa is worse tactically, he at least has the guts to face the media and defend the players like Ancelotti, Zinedine Zidane, Vicente del Bosque, and all the real men who managed this club did. Alonso was Rafael Benitez 2.0, caring as much about his precious reputation as the players themselves did. And yet Ancelotti, a living legend, is not missed by these fans like Alonso. For shame, Madridistas. If you say Alonso was wronged, which is fair, then Ancelotti was wronged times 100.
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