#360view: Ancelotti's reign is on the line

Andy West 15:18 13/05/2015
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  • Powerless: Carlo Ancelotti has problems all over the pitch.

    Real Madrid head into  tonight’s decisive Champions League clash with Juventus with their season – and Carlo Ancelotti’s future – hanging by a thread.

    And that thread looks ready to snap. At this time of year, title-chasing teams need to be fit, unified, playing with coherence and confidence, and delivering convincing performances on a consistent basis.

    Los Blancos, conversely, are limping towards the finishing line.

    They have barely played well over the course of a whole game all calendar year, and are heading into the final weeks of the campaign with serious concerns all over the pitch.

    That starts in goal, where Iker Casillas is coming under fire from increasing numbers of the Bernabeu faithful, who were quick to whistle their captain after Valencia’s opening goal on Saturday even though it wasn’t really his fault.

    In defence, Dani Carvajal has gone backwards and his vulnerability along with Marcelo’s rampaging style makes the team highly susceptible to fast attacks down the flanks.

    The midfield is a disaster zone, with Toni Kroos’s injury the latest in a long line of problems faced by Ancelotti.

    Luka Modric is injured, Isco has lost form at the worst time, Asier Illarramendi and Lucas Silva have been highly unconvincing, and Sami Khedira is persona non grata.

    At least James Rodriguez is playing well, but there’s no sense of cohesion in the midfield engine room.

    Up front, Cristiano Ronaldo is continuing to look a shadow of the player who started the season in scintillating form, with his unpleasant tetchiness offering clear and visible evidence of his discontented state of mind.

    Ronaldo’s fellow members of the ‘BBC’ forward line are hardly firing on all cylinders either, with Karim Benzema lacking match fitness and rhythm after a month on the sidelines through injury, and Gareth Bale’s place in the team under growing threat after an utterly underwhelming season for the most expensive player in history.

    This week’s complaints by Bale’s agent that his teammates should pass him the ball more often are spurious, to say the least – if he doesn’t receive enough passes, it’s because his movement isn’t good enough to create space for the ball to be played.

    Whether the agent’s claims are true or not is immaterial, however.

    The most important point is that they were made at all, especially when they came from a man who is clearly close to the Welshman, who has notably failed to deny them.

    That points clearly at a division in the camp, specifically between Bale and Ronaldo, and provides little confidence that they can conquer Europe together in the coming weeks.

    On the sidelines, Ancelotti seems powerless to intervene.

    That’s not necessarily a criticism: the constant demands of servicing egos and managing hyperbole makes managing Real Madrid the most difficult job in football, and recent history shows that even an ultra-focussed coach like Jose Mourinho is unable to hold things together when they start to fall apart at the Bernabeu.

    Of course, Real Madrid possess a squad full of world-class players, so if they can suddenly gel as a unit in the next three weeks, they could still be crowned champions of Europe.

    But their season peaked in December and right now they are a collective mess.

    Unless things change – immediately – tonight could prove to be another highly uncomfortable evening at the Bernabeu.

    And if Los Blancos do not succeed, it is difficult to see how even the ever-phlegmatic Ancelotti could ride out the inevitable storm of criticism that would follow.

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