As Real Madrid trudged, defeated, off the Spotify Camp Nou pitch on Sunday, Barcelona's newly-crowned champions celebrated behind them. By the time blue-and-red fireworks lit the sky over the stadium, and Barça's players lifted the LaLiga trophy before a long night of partying, Madrid were already heading home.
It was a night and a season to forget for Real Madrid.
A 2-0 scoreline in the Clásico did not reflect Barcelona's dominance. A 14-point gap in the LaLiga table tells a fuller story. With three games remaining, the end-of-season panorama could get even uglier for Los Blancos. Barça are now on 91 points. A 100-point total -- achieved just twice in history, by Madrid in 2011-12 and Barça the following season -- is within reach. There is also the potential for a record-breaking gap between the sides, outdoing the 15-point margin posted by Barça in 2013.
The bleakness of the outlook makes it easy to forget that just under two years ago, on June 1, 2024, Madrid were lifting the UEFA Champions League trophy at Wembley -- their second in two years -- having already wrapped up LaLiga. Since then, it's been two seasons without a major trophy, for the first time since 2006.
How did Madrid fall so far, so fast? It's not necessarily a question of personnel. Nine of the 11 players who started that UCL final in London remain at the club. But a string of strategic mistakes in recruitment and management -- from executive level to the dressing room -- have sent Madrid into a dramatic downward spiral.
- Barcelona cap off LaLiga-winning season with historic Clásico win
- Why Real Madrid's reunion with Mourinho seems increasingly likely
- Why central midfielders are this summer's biggest transfer trend
The Mbappé effect
The signing of Kylian Mbappé on a free transfer in 2024 looked like a no-brainer, adding one of the world's most lethal goal scorers to an already winning team.
However, some club sources now question whether bringing in Mbappé was the right move, at a time when Vinícius Junior was established as the team's top star and a Ballon d'Or contender. They characterize the signing as a personal project of the president, Florentino Pérez, rather than addressing the team's needs.
On paper, Mbappé has delivered in terms of individual numbers, with 31 LaLiga goals last season and 24 so far this season. But it's increasingly obvious that his arrival has unbalanced the side and the dressing room, with three managers in a row -- Carlo Ancelotti, Xabi Alonso and now Álvaro Arbeloa -- struggling to create a functioning team structure that can incorporate stars Mbappé, Vinícius and Jude Bellingham, in particular against elite opposition.
Last season, an Mbappé-led Madrid lost four Clásicos to Barcelona. In 2025-26, they managed a 2-1 win over their biggest rivals in October, but they've also suffered heavy defeats, like September's 5-2 loss at Atlético Madrid, with a total of six losses in LaLiga, including Sunday's climactic showdown at Camp Nou.
In Europe, Mbappé has played 25 Champions League games for Real Madrid. The club have lost 10 of them, including knockout stage eliminations to Arsenal and Bayern Munich.
This year, there have been persistent injuries that have limited Mbappé's participation, missing crucial games against Manchester City, Benfica, and most recently, the Clásico.
For the first time, the forward's attitude and commitment are in doubt. Last week's holiday with his partner while recovering from injury -- arriving back in Madrid minutes before his teammates were due to face Espanyol -- was a PR disaster, although it was dismissed by his camp as "an overinterpretation of elements related to a recovery period strictly supervised by the club."
In his absence for Sunday's game at Camp Nou, his support for the team was limited to a half-hearted "Hala Madrid" on Instagram, posted with the score already 2-0 in Barcelona's favor.
As a consequence, Mbappé will go into next season under unprecedented pressure and a new kind of scrutiny, being questioned like never before, and needing to deliver on an individual and collective level to justify his place at the heart of this Real Madrid project.
Alonso bested by player power
Alonso arrived as Madrid coach last summer with a mandate to fix the problems of the laissez-faire Ancelotti era, reigning in the dressing room, and introducing a more rigorous, team-oriented style of play. His reign lasted just 233 days.
Sources close to the coach and the squad told ESPN that Alonso was quickly undermined by internal doubts about him and his management. Alonso's appointment was championed by director general José Ángel Sánchez, but others felt he had the wrong kind of profile for Madrid: he was too much of a coach.
Those doubts started with President Pérez, and later extended to key members of the team. ESPN reported that Vinícius, Federico Valverde and Bellingham were three senior players who were unconvinced.
There was little doubt on which side Alonso fell in the Vinícius vs. Mbappé debate. The coach first planned to bench the Brazilian during last summer's Club World Cup, and then did so several times with the season underway. The extent of Vinícius' discontent was laid bare by his reaction to being substituted by Alonso in October's Bernabéu Clásico, vocally disputing the coach's decision, on a global stage.
In the days that followed, Alonso did not receive the club's support. Instead, his judgment was questioned. It was a blow to his authority from which it proved impossible to recover. Other important members of the team backed Alonso and his methods, and the fault lines in the squad continue to this day.
The team's form under Alonso did not bounce back, and he was eventually fired in January.
Arbeloa wins and loses the dressing room
Alonso's replacement, Arbeloa, arrived with a remit to unify the dressing room, get key players like Vinícius onside and maximize the talent that the club felt was still evident in the squad.
In public, Arbeloa's praise for his players was absolute and frequently over-the-top. Vinícius "embodies what a Real Madrid player is," Arbeloa said. Valverde had "the spirit of [Madrid legend] Juanito." Antonio Rüdiger deserved "a statue in my garden."
At first, it worked. Madrid's form improved. Arbeloa won 17 of his first 21 games in charge, including victories over teams coached by managers with the longest CVs in football: José Mourinho, Pep Guardiola and Diego Simeone. Vinícius found career-best form, scoring crucial goals against City and Atletico, and embracing Arbeloa on the touchline.
Then, in the season's decisive phase, the limitations of Arbeloa's player-focused, vibes-first management were exposed.
In LaLiga, Madrid dropped points against Mallorca, Girona and Real Betis, the title looking increasingly remote. In the Champions League, they were eliminated -- admittedly after a valiant effort, 6-4 on aggregate -- by Bayern Munich. Arbeloa's successful integration of academy players was ditched, and some of the team's familiar flaws, notably a failure to operate effectively out of possession, returned.
At the same time, in a pressure-cooker environment, the dressing room has been rocked by one behind-the-scenes scandal after another.
ESPN reported that Rudiger was involved in a confrontation with a teammate, later confirmed to be defender Álvaro Carreras. Sources told ESPN that Arbeloa's relationship with several players, including Dani Carvajal, Dani Ceballos and Raúl Asencio, had suffered, and that there had also been flashpoints involving Mbappé and Arbeloa's staff.
Recent training sessions have been focused almost entirely on trying to maintain a positive atmosphere, sources said, and even in that, they have been unsuccessful.
Arbeloa's public statements on the team -- and his diagnosis of its problems -- have also undergone a subtle but important shift in recent weeks, implicitly questioning the players' attitude as results have deteriorated.
"As I've said many, many times, we need to take a step forward collectively," he admitted post-match at Camp Nou.
"We need a much clearer idea of what we want to do, and to put the collective ahead of the individual. We need a clear idea. That's the starting point. We've dropped many points against teams where we shouldn't have."
Trouble at the top
Off the pitch, Madrid and 79-year-old president Perez have faced exhausting battles in recent years with the sport's institutions, with uncharacteristic setbacks in some of the club's most high-profile projects.
As recently as last November, Perez was still insisting in an assembly of Madrid's members that he was "more convinced than ever" of victory over UEFA in the Super League dispute.
Three months later, Madrid released a statement saying an agreement had been reached with Europe's governing body, with a consequent shelving of the club's seeking of substantial damages.
Closer to home, the billion-dollar project to rebuild and revamp the Bernabéu Stadium was hit by legal action over hosting concerts at the venue, after allegations that noise limits were breached. Such events are currently paused until an agreement can be reached with city officials.
Pérez's stated aim of introducing a new ownership structure for the member-owned club, selling a percentage to an external investor, also appears to be on hold, with no sign of the extraordinary general meeting that the president had promised to debate the issue.
All this coincides with two years without a major trophy, with the club's on-field management facing even greater scrutiny. When Pérez resigned at the end of his first spell as president in 2006 -- before returning three years later -- he admitted the players in the Galáctico era had been "spoilt."
Now, 20 years later and in a comparable sporting situation of two years without any trophies, he faces a similar accusation of enabling player power, to the team's detriment.
Is a revolution possible this summer?
A summer of significant decisions that will have a profound impact on Madrid's direction of travel -- a new coach, player arrivals and departures, and whatever structural changes are deemed necessary -- coincides with what some sources describe as a power vacuum inside the club.
The Pérez era has been marked by a presidential approach, and given the president's age and health, that is increasingly challenging. In the meantime, sources say, others are jockeying for position.
Madrid's managerial appointments over the last decade have tended to be governed by familiarity, from returns for Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane, to former players like Alonso and Arbeloa. It's no surprise, then, that another former coach is the leading candidate to take over now, in José Mourinho.
The funds available for new signings are -- by Madrid standards -- limited, without first raising money for outgoings. The underwhelming impact of last summer's recruits -- Trent Alexander-Arnold, Dean Huijsen, Álvaro Carreras and Franco Mastantuono -- leaves in doubt whether the players identified will actually strengthen the team. And then there are other, hard-to-resolve issues like Vinícius' contract standoff.
The challenges are substantial, and the consequences for getting these decisions wrong could be another unacceptable season. What happens next will determine if the events of the last week, culminating in a meek defeat at Camp Nou, represent rock bottom or if there's further to fall.
