No attacker in Real Madrid’s history had gone without a goal for as long as Rodrygo but at last he was released and he had a message to deliver, performed for public consumption. The Brazilian, who had not scored in nine months and was starting only his fifth game this season, beat Gianluigi Donnarumma to give them the lead against Manchester City. Then he turned and ran towards the touchline to embrace Xabi Alonso, the manager on the edge for whom this could prove an even greater release.
“It’s a difficult moment for him, like it is for us,” Rodrygo said. “Things aren’t coming off and I wanted to show people that we are together with the coach. People say a lot of things and I just wanted to show that we are united. We need that unity to keep going.” By the time Rodrygo spoke, the lead had been taken from them, another loss taking its place. City had turned it around, going 2-1 ahead with “very little”, Alonso said. That can happen when you’re in a “delicate” state, he added, but at least Madrid had reacted. This time they could not complete a comeback. Endrick, on as a substitute having played 11 minutes all season, hit the bar in the dying moments.
“It wasn’t enough,” Rodrygo said. The question was whether it would be enough for Alonso to keep his job. “We didn’t feel that [this was a trial of the coach],” Thibaut Courtois said, but that was how it had been framed publicly, and how it was felt privately: not an ultimatum as such, but not so far off. “We have shown that we’re with the manager: we have played well, given 100%,” Courtois said. And so judgment was reserved, sentencing suspended, pending Alavés on Sunday and Sevilla six days later.
Madrid had been beaten at home for the second time in four days, taking their recent run to two wins in eight, but this was a little different. This was City, not Celta, for a start. It was not Elche, Girona or Rayo Vallecano either. Stripped down, simplified, they had actually run, the easiest and most damning accusation not levelled at them this time. With eight men out against a team Alonso called “top”, they had lost only to a scrambled finish and a penalty, almost salvaging something at the end. There were “a lot of very good things” about this performance, the head coach said, and there could be “no reproach” of his players this time.
That was not always entirely true. There were periods in the second half, as the frustration grew, when the Santiago Bernabéu had whistled. At full time, some had repeated that, although there was some applause. But mostly, a quiet stream to the exits. “That’s normal, we understand it,” Rodrygo said. “We have been here a long time and we know what happens when we’re not good.” Alonso said: “It’s nothing that hasn’t happened before. And there were moments when they clapped too.” He also insisted sometimes “you lot [the press] paint things a certain way”, although he admitted: “The results are real, an objective fact.”
“I feel the support of the players,” Alonso said. And if he backed them, they backed him too, at least in front of the cameras. There has been a coming together, conversations: the coach had accommodated them, perhaps more than they had accommodated him, meeting somewhere not quite in the middle.
How lasting a solution that is remains an open question. One little moment in the post-match press conference felt significant, even if it slipped by almost unnoticed. Asked about Pep Guardiola’s advice to do things his way, Alonso had allowed that idea to hang there, for those listening to conclude that Guardiola’s implicit criticism of Madrid was not entirely misplaced, when he replied: “I have a good relationship with Pep, we know each other well and he knows what he is saying. I don’t have to evaluate what he said.”
Above all though, he could be satisfied that there was a resistance, a reaction. Madrid’s players had not let Alonso fall during the game and after it they defended him. Part of it may have been for show, done out of duty or self-preservation for players under scrutiny too, but in this context it was significant. So was the intensity with which they played – even if there is a risk of the most basic of standards somehow being elevated to a kind of success; even if the temptation might have been to ask: why isn’t it always like this?
The previous day, Aurélien Tchouaméni insisted the coach had a plan, that their failings were not his fault. It was down to the players to have the intensity. “I think my teammate Aurélien said it in the press conference,” Raúl Asencio said after full time. “The only way is [for] the players to change the attitude. The attitude is the key thing and today we have seen a change. The dressing room is with Xabi Alonso 100%. The day-to-day at Valdebebas [the training ground] is very, very good.”
Jude Bellingham, asked if they were behind the coach, also replied in numbers: “100%.”
“We’re still trying to work it out in the changing room,” he said. “We know that the [outside] noise will not be helpful so it is about trying to sort it out in there. As a player, seeing what we have in there, working with the coach, we have everything we need to turn this around. Maybe we just need a bit of luck. We have to talk about it. But I have faith that this season is not over just because we have been on a bad run of form. As players that kills us and we are trying to turn it around.
“I think the manager has been great. I personally have a great relationship with him. I think a lot of the lads do as well. After the run of games where we drew a few [against Rayo, Elche and Girona], we had some really great conversations internally and we felt like we were going to [come through] the [other] side of that form [having won in Bilbao]. Then the last couple of games we just let ourselves down again. But no one is downing tools, no one is complaining, moaning, thinking the season is over.”
“Everything passes in the end,” Alonso said.
