Zinedine Zidane accepted that his fate will be decided by February’s Champions League tie against Paris Saint-Germain after Real Madrid were dumped out of the Copa del Rey by Leganes.
Real Madrid currently sit in fourth place of the La Liga with 35 points and are 19 points behind unbeaten leaders Barcelona even though Madrid have a game in hand, it is very unlikely they will be able to catch the runaway leaders by the end of the season.
This meant that the Copa del Rey was Real Madrid’s best chance at a trophy this season and all Los Blancos fans would have felt confident when they were to take on Leganes in the quarter-finals.
After a first leg away result of 1-0 to Real Madrid, manager Zinedine Zidane took the bold move of not even having star men Christiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale on the bench for the second leg. The move backfired badly as the underdogs went on to win the second leg at Estadio Santiago Bernabéu 1-2 which meant they progressed into the semi-finals on away goals. The decision to leave out both Cristiano Ronaldo nor Gareth Bale, who could potentially have affected Real’s fortunes, backfired spectacularly in one of the worst results in the club’s golden history.
For Zidane and his team, the La Liga is over, the Copa is over: now only the possibility of more Champions League glory remains, starting with a do-or-die clash against Paris Saint-Germain. But this is likely to quell the angry voices that will only get louder after this historic humiliation. As it stands, Madrid’s season could be over by March 6, a catastrophe almost without parallel for a team used to fighting for silverware and a painful lesson for Zidane that sometimes it does not pay to play with fire.
With star men such as Neymar and Mbappe and also with Cavani in good form for PSG, it will be hard to consider Real Madrid favourites going into this big Champions League clash.
“Of course. That is really clear,” Zidane said when asked if his job was on the line. “I am responsible for this, I’m the coach.”
“I am very disappointed and will take responsibility for all this. But I will keep working, tomorrow is another day, and what we must do is pick ourselves up and think of Saturday’s game [at Valencia]. But today is a very hard blow.”
“I am responsible for this. I pick the team – and in the end I was wrong about many things. I am angry with myself, not with my players. My players tried, ran, maybe they played badly, they have part of the blame, but I am the most responsible.” Zidane said.
“The solution is to keep working. I will take on this situation and I will keep working as I have always done. You can ask what happens now? We will continue, we must change this, there are many games left to do it. Today is a failure for me.”
