Friday 19 / April / 2024
Madrid: The 2008/09 season finished with 16 losses for Real Madrid, a dire year for Los Blancos, which culminated in the 6-2 defeat to Barcelona at the Santiago Bernabeu as the Catalans all but wrapped up La Liga Santander.
Four losses followed the loss to Barcelona, and elections in the summer of 2009 then changed the club from top to bottom as they looked to ensure that this terrible campaign was not replicated.
A decade on, the 13-time European champions have matched that appalling record of losses.
There are just three games remaining in La Liga Santander and the fear is that Madrid could lose all of those. Whilst unlikely, if it were to happen it would make it the joint-worst record in the club's 117-year history, following the 19 defeats from 1984/85, which was prior to the eruption of La Quinta del Buitre and the five consecutive league titles that followed.
It should also be remembered that Madrid are 18 points behind champions Barcelona this year, too.
Los Blancos have lost 10 games in La Liga Santander, two in the Copa del Rey (against Leganes and Barcelona), three in the UEFA Champions League (twice to CSKA Moscow and once against Ajax), and one in the European Super Cup against Atletico Madrid, the first match of the Julen Lopetegui era.
There, in Tallinn, started one of Madrid's worst seasons in their history. Of the 16 defeats, eight have come at the Santiago Bernabeu and eight have been away from home. There is not a single factor that can explain the downturn this season, either.
The cycle of the UEFA Champions League winners from four of the last five years seems to have come to an end while an underwhelming transfer window last summer is shown in Madrid's place in La Liga Santander but also in Europe.
As if it were a curse, the parallels between the 2008/09 season and this current campaign are remarkable. There has been the same amount of defeats (16), painful eliminations from the last 16 of the UEFA Champions League (Liverpool with a 4-0 win at Anfield, and Ajax with a 4-1 victory at the Bernabeu), embarrassing defeats to Barcelona (6-2 at the Bernabeu in 2008/09 whilst this season there has been a 5 -1 loss at the Camp Nou and a 3-0 defeat at home), and we speak of the speak of these seasons as being pre and post-Cristiano Ronaldo.
In the first instance, Florentino Perez revolutionised the side with the arrivals of Cristiano, Karim Benzema, Kaka and Xabi Alonso. The president's attempt to salvage things this season came with the return of Zinedine Zidane as head coach though he himself has suffered two defeats from his eight games since coming back.
Zidane agreed to take over the team with everything lost this season as he looks to assemble a new side and bring peace to the Bernabeu and the dressing room. Although the Frenchman has done a good job in this sense, the results have not followed.
His home form has been very good, winning all four games, yet it is a different story away from the Bernabeu as Madrid have not won an away match since his return, drawing against Leganes and Getafe, and losing against Valencia and Rayo Vallecano.
