Juande Ramos Takes Over Reigns At Madrid

After 72 games, Pedja Mija­tovic did take long in mak­ing Juande Ramos the 11th coach in ten sea­sons for the Merengues, the ninth this decade.  The writ­ing was on the wall for Schus­ter after Madrid lost their first home game of the sea­son against Sevilla.  Accord­ing to sev­eral reports, the for­mer Ger­man inter­na­tional lost his team, espe­cially the team lead­ers.  The straw that broke the camel’s back was when he men­tioned that Madrid had “no shot” against Barcelona this com­ing week­end in the biggest game in Span­ish football.

The change was quick as reports of the Schus­ter sack­ing began mak­ing the rounds early in the Madrid after­noon when news wires like Cadena Ser began report­ing that the for­mer Merengue coach was given his walk­ing papers and the for­mer Tot­ten­ham and Sevilla coach stepped in imme­di­ately.  Ramos signed a con­tract that will have him in the Madrid bench until the end of the season.

Crit­i­cisms have been raised as far as the quick­ness in which the hir­ing was made.  The press was shocked at the fact that Ramos was even intro­duced almost in the same breath as Mija­tovic was announc­ing that Schus­ter accepted his sack­ing “well, but with a great deal of sadness.”

“There’s noth­ing higher than being (the coach) at Madrid,” said Ramos at his “intro­duc­tory press con­fer­ence”.   Things do not get eas­ier for Juande as he will have to assume right away.  He took over the team today and will be sit­ting on the bench on Wednes­day for Madrid’s Cham­pi­ons League match against Zenit St. Peters­burg.   Oh, also add to that the fact that his debut will be against none other than Barcelona at the Nou Camp this com­ing weekend.

After his glo­ri­ous reign at Sevilla where he won the UEFA Cup twice, the Copa del Rey, and the Euro­pean and Span­ish Super Cups he left unex­pect­edly in the mid­dle of last sea­son to White Hart Lane.  Despite win­ning the Car­ling Cup with Spurs, Ramos did lit­tle to right the ship there.  So bad was the sit­u­a­tion there that the Lon­don side was at the bot­tom of the table prior to being shown the door.   Not all was to blame in the Span­ish coach as both Rob­bie Keane and Dim­i­tar Berba­tov were sold dur­ing the sum­mer and their sub­sti­tutes Luka Mod­ric and Pavly­chenko were not adapt­ing to play in the Pre­mier­ship.  Or weren’t they?

Can a coach make such a dif­fer­ence that a team go from being at the bot­tom of the table in Eng­land and not being able to win a game to win­ning 10 out of their last 12 matches.  I guess there is no need for foot­notes on that one…