Sid Lowe

Now, that's not to say that the fans were all saying, it's terrible, we shouldn't have sacked him.

But I think there was a feeling amongst a lot of Real Madrid fans that an opportunity had been lost.

It's not just that he'd lost Xabi Alonso, an opportunity had been lost.

And why do I say this?

Because last year was fairly disastrous.

For most of the season, Ancelotti was talking about effort, he was talking about attitude, he was talking about essentially there being a lack of commitment.

And with the arrival of Xavi Alonso after Carlo Ancelotti, he was wildly successful and we should never lose sight of that.

There was a sense that here's the chance to construct something, to build a structured team, to build something that's done by a manager, that has a model, that has a changing culture, that has a step into the right direction.

And at the risk of simplifying it,

a kind of a sense that this is something a bit more modern.

This is something that's a bit more in tune with the way football's going at the moment.

And I think that when he was sacked, it wasn't just that people thought Alonso's gone, it's thought, ah, there was our chance to build something coherent and structured, and it's gone.

And what that, I think, speaks to is an idea that, and to answer your question really directly, that perhaps there is a culture at the club in terms of the way the players feel about their own power, in terms of the way the players approach the game, that they're not necessarily uncoachable,

But if you try and impose a system on them, if you try and impose a model on them, rather than... And Jude Bellingham himself used this phrase, I think, in the first season under Ancelotti, we play off the cuff a bit.

And rather than doing that to try and have a structure and a constructed model, I think there's a sense from a lot of the fans that that's broken down.

Why?

Because the culture at the club...

kind of wasn't really inducive to it.

Now, that's not to say that's necessarily a bad thing.

Who knows?