are two very different things and sometimes the
club itself is unsure where the distinction should
be made.
They wanted Jose Mourinho. He was hired as
coach to be the ego above all egos; the man
capable of pointing to his medal tally and drag an
under-performing dressing room into line. It
worked, for a while. He won the league title but
eventually departed with a trail of discord and
disharmony in his wake.
They wanted the easy-going nature of Carlo
Ancelotti. He was sought to offset the upset and
turmoil created by Mourinho; the Yang to the
Special One's Yin. "I do not like screaming," he
says. "I want the team I work with to be convinced
of my ideas. Only this." He, too, managed to
huddle together the most demanding dressing
room in sport and deliver for Real Madrid the holy
grail - la Decima.
Madrid are now left to ponder the duality in both of
their recent coaching appointments as Ancelotti
prepares for his showdown meeting with president
Florentino Perez following the club's last game of
the season against Getafe. He understands that he
will need to go after this trophyless campaign.
"I know this world is like that," he said. "I'm
surprised that anyone is surprised about this. I'll
take awareness of having given all I could give.
These are things that can happen in football."
The choleric Mourinho inevitably went out in a fiery
blaze. The phlegmatic Ancelotti has, perhaps, been
too laid-back. The character traits that marked
them out as desirable to Real Madrid have been,
eventually, their undoing. What Madrid wanted was
not necessarily what they needed.
The club is now conducting some soul-searching.
They are leaning towards a man with the self-
confidence of Mourinho but not his arrogance.
They are leaning towards someone who, like
Ancelotti, will allow his players to get on with he
job but who won't let them ease up too
much. They are leaning towards someone they
need - albeit someone the fans might not want.
The next man potentially in, not unlike Vicente del
Bosque when replacing John Toshack in 1999,
might seem like the underwhelming appointment
but he will know Real Madrid through and through.
He will not touch either of the extremes that
Mourinho and Ancelotti did.
If he gets the job, Rafael Benitez will be hired as
much for who is he is and what he represents as
what he has done. He had left Real Madrid in 1995
after spending, essentially, what was the first half
of his professional life with the club.
Benitez boasts the personal recommendation of
Madrid's highly-influential general manager Jose
Angel Sanchez. Benitez's agent, Manuel Garcia-
Quilon, has spoken on the record of his close
relationship with Sanchez as well as Perez.
Madrid's immediate priorities are total domination
of the domestic landscape and consistent success
on the continent. Under this, the second term of
Perez's presidency, they are not achieving them.
Real have won only three Liga titles in 12 years.
They have won the Champions League only once
since 2002 despite breaking the world transfer
record three times in the last six seasons -
including twice in the one summer when Perez
returned to the presidency in 2009.
Barcelona's is perpetual success with the odd gap
here and there, whereas Madrid's big trophy wins
are exceptional, rather than the norm.
Ancelotti has not been able to battle Barca nor has
he been able to match la Decima this season. The
fight has now gone out of his team. It can now be
said they reached their peak with the Club World
Cup win against San Lorenzo in December, a
victory that confirmed four cups in 2014. They
achieved Spanish, European and world glory. The
run stopped before the Galacticos went
intergalactic. Ancelotti has been unable to muster
the performances in the second half of this season
even as, again, the prizes loomed into view.
"We've had two different seasons," Ancelotti
admitted. "Until December with all the records and
all the titles and then the second part, where we
could have done better. It has hurt us at the end of
the season."
Perez was the one who let Del Bosque leave in
2003, only days after winning the league title, but
he could finally be about to appoint his natural
successor to move the club forward and into their
next era. Madrid did not appreciate what they had
at the time when they parted ways with Del
Bosque, a loyal man who knew the club and knew
how to win.
That Primera Divison crown, the second won by
Del Bosque, was sandwiched between the two won
by Benitez at Valencia. If anyone doubts his
aptitude for sustained managerial brilliance over
the course of a league campaign then look no
further than those two remarkable victories.
The prospect of having Benitez coach the team will
not give Real Madrid supporters any butterflies in
their tummies because they know what they are
going to see. Benitez builds his teams to be hard
to beat, to execute his game plan with discipline
and to accept that not every player is going to play
every game.
Ancelotti has long been let down by his own
inability to manage a team through a successful
league season. He has underachieved in that
respect. He has persevered with the same players,
by and large. He knows his favourites and picks
them every week despite the evidence on show in
Catalunya that rotation, however occasional, pays
off.
The elements of rotation and league success are
inextricably linked when players have to play up to
70 games a season. Benitez knows this.
If Cristiano Ronaldo thinks he is not going to be
rotated out of the line-up as Benitez sees fit then
he may call Steven Gerrard and ask him if he was
really forced to play a season on the wing.
Iker Casillas might want to speak to former team-
mate Jerzy Dudek and confirm if he was really
shipped out immediately after winning Liverpool
the Champions League in 2005 with his saves in
the shootout against AC Milan.
Benitez is not a man to get flustered in the face of
criticism. He walked into Inter after Jose Mourinho
and took on then-owner Massimo Moratti from day
one over the need for re-investment in the team.
Hindsight has shown Benitez to be totally right.
Inter did not endure a blip after Mourinho left, they
crumbled to their very foundations.
He had no qualms either about taking over at
Chelsea, stepping into the seat once occupied by
Mourinho and Ancelotti, despite the widespread
hatred of him by the Chelsea fans. He got on with
the job, won them a Europa League and re-
qualified them for the Champions League. He is
unflappable. It is unlikely the media scrutiny at
Real will get to him, either.
He has suffered at Napoli as he now approaches
the dog days of his reign. His reputation will not
have grown in many people's estimations. He has
delivered a Coppa Italia though and only a chronic
lack of investment by president Aurelio De
Laurentiis last summer prevented him storming
back to the Champions League group stages this
season. He will not have those impediments at
Santiago Bernabeu.
His priority will be to make a team that can
compete on two fronts. Can he win the Spanish
league? Yes he can. Can he win the Champions
League? Yes he can. He has done both.
He is still perceived in some quarters as
yesterday's man. In many respects that is true. He
was here in years gone by. He knows the politics,
the expectations, the demands and the unique
pressures of the White House.
But Rafa Benitez is the right man for Real Madrid's
tomorrow.
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