Valladolid Deny Madrid And Put Schuster One Step Closer

This was one of the most impor­tant games of the sea­son for Real Madrid.  Bernd Schus­ter knew that this was the game that they absolutely had to have if they planned to revert the results of the past cou­ple of weeks both domes­ti­cally and in Europe. Schus­ter knew that they had to win, but his team played like they didn’t want to lose.  Maybe when they arrived in Val­ladolid they mis­in­ter­preted their coach’s mes­sage– not some­thing unusual in the past few weeks.

Reports were com­ing in from the Madrid media stat­ing that the for­mer Ger­man inter­na­tional had offi­cially lost his play­ers– espe­cially Raúl.

Real Madrid played one of their poor­est matches of the sea­son for the first 75 min­utes.   If there was any doubt, Madrid is in as much a cri­sis as the Amer­i­can econ­omy is in a reces­sion.  The team does not respond on the pitch to any chal­lenge that their oppo­nents give them.

Val­ladolid was suf­fo­cat­ing through­out all of their lines.  They gave a pal­lid Madrid less space and even less abil­ity to per­form the way they could.  Let’s not doubt it, Madrid is going through a great deal of trou­ble on both ends of the ball and things got worse as soon as Fabián Canob­bio put Val­ladolid on the board. The home side was able to hold on when their goal­keeper stepped up in a big way. When Madrid decided to play, they threat­ened and took the ball away. That led to very impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ties that if cashed in, would have given the game a dif­fer­ent look. Madrid looked to get bailed out by that last minute per­for­mance, but it would not be this time around.

Asenjo came up huge, ston­ing Raúl and sav­ing two shots in a row that had equal­izer writ­ten all over it.  After that bar­rage ended, Madrid seemed help­less and it showed when Gabriel Heinze was sent off in the 88th minute.

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Worst of all for Schus­ter, the shad­ows of Miguel Ángel Por­tu­gal and Michel begin to loom even larger.  There could be one more oppor­tu­nity for Madrid to save Schus­ter and pos­si­bly their short-term suc­cess if they can get a win against BATE Borisov in the Cham­pi­ons League.  If that match comes up neg­a­tive (loss or draw) then Bernd Schus­ter could kiss job adios.