Sam Tighe

Because in an individual game, you have variance and whatever else.

I also believe that a lot of football fans and the Madrid press don't necessarily feel that way.

And so while they've had some games where they were really bad in that run, they also had some games where they were pretty good in that run.

And more importantly, before, they might have been five points clear, but they weren't playing well.

And it was Mbappe papering and Courtois papering over cracks.

And so I have to ask, if they had won the Supercopa, would Xabi Alonso still be in charge?

And that tells you that this is not the reason to sack the guy because you don't sack or keep a coach based on one game.

If you think he's doing a bad job, if you think he's mismanaging the egos, if you're dissatisfied with the results against Alaveda and whatever else before Christmas, if the players are unhappy, winning one game...

Doesn't change that.

Shouldn't change that.

It is unique.

Kyle Ancelotti, remember him telling me, like, this is the only place in the world where you can be 4-0 up and winning and your own fans will boo you.

Absolutely.

He's like, I know because it's happened to me.

I get the pañolada.

I'm like, we're 4-0 up.

I'm like, what?

And that's gone too.

Okay, if you want to be super cynical about this and get into hard truth territory with Real Madrid, the Florentino superstar-driven galactical model that we've had for the last 10, 15 years, and which has yielded success, yielded success because in knockout competitions, and they've done better in the Champions League than anybody else, as we know, what makes the difference is superstars doing something special.

goalkeepers doing something special.