Editorial: Who To Blame For Real's Debacle?

It had to happen sooner or later and it finally did. Real's weak defence was over exposed by a tactically excellent and technically good side like Monaco, who could have scored even more goals in the second half, but that might have been too harsh a punishment for the Madrid team who for the first time in 5 years, will not be playing in the Champions League semi finals.

It is probably too easy to blame the rear guard at this point as obviously the faults should mostly fall on the management area which kept going on with their stubborn idea of 'Pavones and Zidanes' that is buy world class forwards and develop young talented defenders from the youth team. This is a big risk as you are not guaranteed that year in, year out, your youth sector will have a hot prospect to help the main team and more importantly, these young players have obviously no real experience in professional football to really help Real from the start; no chance of developing as they should.

Fans and critics are already pointing their fingers, and the three main culprits are Perez, Valdano and Queiroz, each with their own faults which in the end resulted in this debacle.

Perez and Valdano never really saw eye to eye especially in the transfer market department as one of them keeps on believing that the most important thing is scoring one goal more than your opponents, while the other would like to bring in a world class defender rather than the 'usual' world class forward.

Queiroz is stuck in the middle as he doesn't really have a say in all of this, or rather when he had a chance to say what he thought, he just told the management what they wanted to hear, that is that the team was great and the defence was good enough. Lack of courage or maybe lack of experience by a coach who never really ever coached a big team, except for being an assistant manager to Alex Ferguson with Manchester United.

Many mistakes have been made, and the one of appointing an inexperienced and unaccomplished coach to guide a team like Real Madrid was a big risk but if Perez just wanted someone to control and follow his orders then he got what he bargained for. Would another more experienced coach, such as Capello, accepted the lack of good defenders? Highly doubtful.

Another mistake was sending Hierro away. Yes he was getting on with the years and his pace had decreased considerably, however he's probably still good enough to guide Real's current backline and offer more confidence and reliability to the defence.

That there have been mistakes is for everyone to see, but the question now is: will these mistakes be repeated? Or will Perez finally see the light and go for a world class defender rather than the forward? The Real President can easily fork out the money for players such as Samuel or Mexes who would improve considerably the back line of the current Spanish champions. But is he willing to do so? Or will he be getting a Henry, Joaquin or Totti?

Obviously it's the players who go on the pitch so they should and will get the blame, even though when you have such an offensive team, there's so much the players can do defensively. Figo seems to have become too inconsistent; Ronaldo growing bigger around the waist by the day, Zidane is getting on with his age and Beckham playing in a role which isn't his.

So what's the next step for Real? Have Perez admit he made a mistake in not buying a defender or going forward with the current line of thought of buying forwards? It's clear this can't go on, as yes it's nice for the public to see all those stars playing together, but along with the stars you need the players who do the dirty work like the Gattuso or even Makelele.