Real Madrid Is Stuck

"On Wednesday, Real Madrid hosted Manchester City in a portentous Champions League showdown that, for the home team, promised or threatened to mark a definitive before and after. Win, and Madrid could credibly claim the result as a turning point, when a devastatingly talented roster, helmed by one of the game's most exciting young managers, put aside its shaky beginnings and started to become the superteam it was meant to be."

"Lose, especially if the loss was a bad one, and you could assume that the club would take it as the final sign that things simply weren't working, and that the time had come for drastic change, starting with the firing of the aforementioned exciting young manager Xabi Alonso. But reality didn't prove quite so neat. The Blancos played neither great nor horribly, and though they did lose, 2-1, the defeat was neither encouragingly narrow nor embarrassingly lopsided."

"As is often the case for these mega clubs, where a mere width of a goalpost can separate resounding success from abject failure, you probably wouldn't be able to tell just how close Real has come to the brink of chaos if you were to only look at the facts of the season. Even after Wednesday's loss, Madrid still sits in a comfortable seventh place in the UCL's league-stage table, well positioned to qualify automatically for the round of 16."

Real Madrid lost 2-1 to Manchester City in a Champions League match that had the potential to be a decisive turning point for the club. The team performed neither particularly well nor terribly, leaving its trajectory unchanged and its status ambiguous. Madrid still occupies seventh in its UCL group and remains positioned to qualify automatically for the round of 16. Domestically, Madrid sits second in La Liga, four points behind Barcelona and within reach of the champions. Kylian Mbappé leads scoring with 26 goals across competitions, offering a bright spot amid ongoing uncertainty about the squad's overall direction under Xabi Alonso.

Read at defector.com