Claude Makelele said what every single Real Madrid player needs to hear (and Jose Mourinho, too)
Claude Makelele talked about the various problems that are going on at Real Madrid right now in a recent interview after the loss to Atletico Madrid on Sunday.
To keep it short, Real Madrid were simply outplayed by their city rivals at the Wanda Metropolitano, and the away team had no answer for their questions on both ends of the pitch in either half.
Real Madrid looked out of sorts during the match, and it was clear that a lot of things needed to change for Real Madrid to get back to playing at a high level, and Makelele laid it all out for them to listen to.
He said: "There’s no understanding between the players, or between the players and the coach. Mourinho needs to talk to them.
"The team is weak, there’s no game plan or clear ideas. There’s absolutely NOTHING. We have to demand more from them."
"The problem isn’t the referee; there’s a clear deficiency in the team."
Real Madrid could control how they played, not the referee's decisions - as bad as they were
Finally, someone relevant actually talked about this for once.
Real Madrid can talk about referees all they want. They can make videos about the refereeing decisions that went the other way, and they would all be accurate, because they did go the other way.
The refereeing was atrocious, but that was not all. That is what the club and Jose Mourinho have been talking about, but it is something that, as harsh as it was, they simply cannot control.
What they can and should have controlled was the way they played. A structured gameplan, a better team with more players in form, more control in the middle of the park, more fight in duels, more structure when it comes to attacking sequences.
These were the things that Real Madrid fully controlled. And they absolutely could not do anything about them, so why talk about things that are out of your hands anyway?
Jose Mourinho can talk about the refereeing decisions, but also add at the end that the team did not play well. If he says that he is proud of the way his team played, that is wrong and probably untrue, too.
Real Madrid need to be better at the things that they can control. That is exactly what Makelele is saying. There needs to be so much more from Real Madrid than what we saw against Atletico on Sunday.
Real Madrid are at a very weak point from a mental and physical standpoint, and things need to improve drastically if they want to win any silverware this season. If they are genuinely worried about the outcome of the match against Atletico, they would listen to what Makelele just said.
