MADRID: Real Madrid and coach Manuel Pellegrini were on the wrong end of damning newspaper headlines on Wednesday after their humiliating exit from the King’s Cup at the hands of third-tier Alcorcon.
Real managed to win only 1-0 on the night at the Bernabeu and crashed out 4-1 over two legs to the tiny Segunda B club, who play in the same division as Real’s youth team and have an annual budget more than four hundred times smaller than the La Liga giants.
Even the Madrid-based sports papers showed no mercy, as club and fans woke up to the fact that their expensively assembled squad can no longer match the title treble of Champions League, La Liga and King’s Cup achieved last season by arch-rivals Barcelona.
“Complete disaster,” screamed the headline in As.
“Unprecedented farce,” bellowed Marca above a picture of the celebrating Alcorcon players. The paper said it refused to put any photos of Real on the front page as they did not deserve it.
Fans chanted for Pellegrini to quit when he brought on defender Marcelo for midfielder Lassana Diarra with around 20 minutes left and the Madrid papers focused much of their ire on the Chilean.
Why were the uninspiring midfield pair of Mahamadou Diarra and Fernando Gago included in the starting lineup and striker Karim Benzema and creative midfielders Xabi Alonso and Guti left out of the squad altogether, asked Delfin Melero in Marca.
“The final whistle made possible an unprecedented situation,” Melero wrote. “The Bernabeu booed its own team and coach and gave an ovation to Alcorcon, a team with spirit that demonstrated to Madrid that without pride and without a plan you’re going nowhere.” Tomas Guasch, writing in As, said it was “completely unacceptable” that Pellegrini had changed the starting lineup he had used for the previous three matches and that was beginning to gel.
“And that there wasn’t a single forward on the bench is absolutely unacceptable too,” he added.
El Mundo columnist Orfeo Suarez noted that Real president Florentino Perez was not known for his loyalty to coaches and said the spectacle of the fans calling for Pellegrini’s head did not bode well for the Chilean.
“Madrid will make an effort to back the coach and quickly turn the page but wounds left behind can fester,” he wrote.
