Real Madrid fires Manager after defeat in El Clasico

At the time you read this, Julen Lopetegui has been fired as manager of Real Madrid, and he and Florentino Perez managed to screw up both Spain's World Cup and the first half of Real Madrid's campaign, in less than five months.

Julen Lopetegui

There's a basic rule that every club ought to follow but often don't, because clubs are run by humans and humans are run by emotions: you don't sack or retain a manager based on the result of a single game.

But the Clasico has its own rules and so too does Florentino's mind. They were 2-0 up but it could well have been twice as many, given the way Jordi Alba was torturing Nacho, the way Luis Suarez was carrying the attack and how Sergio Busquets was domineering over the middle of the park.

 Madrid's former manager

Then, for the first half of the second 45, after removing Raphael Varane from the pitch and switching to a back three, they looked like a team that could turn things around. Marcelo, who has scored 75 percent of Madrid's goals in the past month -- reflect on the absurdity of that stat for a minute -- pulled one back. Luka Modric sent a chance he ought to have buried off the post instead. Karim Benzema missed the chance to score.

For those 25 minutes it looked as if the tide could be turned for Lopetegui and Madrid; Suarez's header, when he bent the laws of physics to his will thumping an improbably powerful header past Thibaut Courtois. Suarez remains an exceptional center-forward, he has scored twice from open play in the previous 15 games.

That was that. At 3-1, they weren't going to recover. Real Madrid had no choice but to fearlessly put their forward in the most desperate, disorganized way, and Barca ran up the score to five, although it could well have been more.

Games hinge on incidents, which is why an analysis has to be based on performance, not result. So to any evaluation of a manager. The mere fact that Modric's finish hit the post might have been a matter of inches and infinitesimal angles, but it would not have changed some basic facts.
 Barcelona finished 17 points ahead of Real Madrid last season for a reason, and stripping them of Lionel Messi and Madrid of Cristiano Ronaldo doesn't alter the fact that there is a lot of ground to make up. Another is that even if you strip away the last 15 minutes and the three goals Barca scored, they were much the better side for twice as long as Madrid in the rest of the game.

Real Madrid has been better than their results under Lopetegui, in all competitions, they are underperforming expected goals by 7 goals, but the gap is down to individual talent that was already there, not down to his system.