Camacho leaves Madrid - Sid's thoughts...
Nothing lasts forever. Especially not Real Madrid manager José Antonio Camacho. Just three games into the season, the man with the famously sweaty pits, the soothing presence of a rhino in a playground, and an obsession with 'huevos', or balls, has quit in a huff. Again.
He lasted 115 days. Which really isn't very good, although it is slightly better than his last stint as coach at the Bernabéu, when he managed to walk out after 23 and without taking charge for a single match. The first time, Camacho walked because the then president Lorenzo Sanz wouldn't let him chose his own back-room staff; this time it's not just the president but the players too who are the problem.
After long conversations with Raúl, Helguera, Míchel Salgado and Roberto Carlos (but not, noticeably, the ever-petulant Guti, one of the club's captains), Camacho resigned yesterday, insisting that he couldn't take it any more, that he could not control the dressing-room, that he had lost the support of the club heavyweights.
Pérez refused to accept and a final decision will be made today, but it's hard to see Camacho, as stubborn as a mule with his feet nailed to the floor, backing down now. All the more so as everyone knows about it - as straight down the line as Daniella Westbrook, Camacho's not the kind of bloke to lose face. Nor, though, is Pérez.
Now, the Spanish press like nothing more than a good old crisis, as gratuitously inflated as a bright orange balloon emblazoned with David Mellor's grinning mug, but this time it's true: Madrid are in crisis. A proper crisis. A real crisis. A galactic one.
They were rubbish but lucky 1-0 winners in their opening two league games against relegation candidates Numancia and Mallorca and weren't just beaten but utterly humiliated by Bayer Leverkusen in Europe - a performance so bad that Diego Maradona called them "a bunch of dogs". And then on Saturday night came the final straw. Madrid lost 1-0 against Espanyol at Montjuic with a display of slapstick genius that also managed to sum up so much of what's wrong.
It had everything. Two red cards, for Walter Samuel and Míchel Salgado; first-choice goalkeeper Iker Casillas getting injured in the warm-up; reserve keeper César Sánchez saving Raúl Tamudo's penalty - twice - before getting injured himself; a penalty miss from Ronaldo; Roberto Carlos bombing about aimlessly up front; Guti telling the fourth official he's a "son of a bitch and a clown"; and no sign whatsoever of a reaction, or any football, from Madrid.
Oh, and four galácticos missing. Which rather says it all. With Luis Figo and Zinedine Zidane already injured, Camacho responded to the Champions League disaster in classic, subtle style - by dropping David Beckham and, at last, captain Raúl.
It was a powerful, aggressive statement of intent from a man disgusted with the attitude of his players, the galáctico culture and the way the club is run. But it was also, at long last a capitulation in the face of pressure from within and without to drop the untouchable yet frankly awful Raúl. It was, said AS on Saturday morning, a revolution. But it didn't work.
"When you thump a fist on the desk you either break the desk or you break your hand, nothing else happens," said Roberto Carlos, really saying it all about Camacho's attitude and the players' reading of him. A bruiser and a bully, Camacho is not the right man for the job, unable to control the hardest thing to control at Madrid - the dressing-room.
Which is a bit of a downer, what with that being precisely why Pérez brought Camacho in - his third coach in as many seasons, a record that even Jesús Gil would be proud of. First Pérez got rid of Vicente Del Bosque because he was cuddly, had a brilliant moustache and was the son of a railway trade unionist ("not modern enough", ran the official reason). Then, he opted for, and made a scapegoat of, Carlos Queiroz when Madrid achieved nothing (except a great new club record of five successive defeats, of course).
Never mind that the squad was too short, that Queiroz pleaded for a centre-back and a defensive midfielder, or that he wasn't allowed to play Celades, who left, or Cambiasso, who didn't but might as well have done. No, it was all Queiroz's fault. He was too soft, too permissive of the capricious galácticos.
Not to worry, fans' favourite Camacho would sort them out (even if Pérez did buy him Owen when he wanted Vieira). A tough-tackling Madrid legend with a foul mouth and a pair of 'huevos' the size of the Bernabéu, famous for marking Johan Cruyff out of his first derbi, was brought in to provide some discipline, to make the galácticos sweat almost as profusely as he does. Squat, ugly, far from refined, he was the very antithesis of galáctico - and that was what Madrid needed.
Only it wasn't. Camacho has walked into a special environment, already rarified by galactically myopic Pérez's marketing-obsessed handling of the club, which causes division and resentment and has left some big-name stars and smaller-name-but-no-less-important players longing to leave. Camacho resents his president's impositions and has found himself unable to handle the dressing-room. Rather than unite his players, his bulldozing style, big mouth and rather unsubtle training regime has served only to divide.
His constant outbursts against "pointless fancy flicks" have irritated Zidane; his complaints over lack of effort have got backs up, as have his very public harangues; his substitutions of Figo and Ronaldo, while leaving Raúl on (in central midfield!), have caused resentment and whispers of favourable treatment for his captain; and while there is perspiration now, there is little inspiration - Madrid have scored just twice in four games, with Roberto Carlos privately complaining that he is no longer allowed to attack.
Camacho is a motivator but he has all the technical and tactical insight of a lump of plywood. Which is all well and good if your players are that talented. But when you lose the ability to motivate it is, as Camacho has admitted, time to walk