Alex Kirkland
Rodrigo Faez
Apr 23, 2025, 04:36 AM ET
Real Madrid's 2024-25 season: discuss. The team's elimination in the Champions League quarterfinals to Arsenal, 5-1 on aggregate, has unleashed a predictable storm of recrimination, soul-searching and mud-slinging in the Spanish capital.
"Humiliated" Marca's frontpage said, the morning after Madrid's comprehensive 3-0 defeat at the Emirates. "It was just a dream," Diario AS admitted a week later, when Madrid's comeback hopes were thwarted in a deflating 2-1 loss at the Bernabéu.
No one -- not the players for their output and work rate, not coach Carlo Ancelotti for his tactics and game management, nor club president Florentino Pérez for the squad's shortcomings -- has escaped criticism. There have been whistles from the Bernabéu crowd for the team's stars, Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior. The atmosphere for Ancelotti's postmatch news conference after the second leg against Arsenal was funereal. In hushed tones, Ancelotti was asked if he'd still be in charge when the FIFA Club World Cup begins in June; if this was his last Champions League game as a manager; if he'd consider walking away from the job.
That Madrid were only four points off the top of LaLiga -- that was extended to seven points on Tuesday night when Barcelona beat Mallorca 1-0, with Real Madrid then playing at Getafe on Wednesday -- felt like an afterthought. So did the fact that the team were just days away from the opportunity to win another trophy, in Saturday's Copa del Rey final against Barcelona in Seville (stream LIVE at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN+). Madrid being in a position to win a domestic Double, when the team have been so unconvincing, for so much of the season, is an inconvenient truth.
Madrid have lost 11 games in 2024-25. They have been thrashed 4-0 and 5-2 by Barcelona. In Europe, they lost 3-1 to AC Milan at the Bernabéu, and 2-0 to Liverpool at Anfield. In LaLiga, in 2025 alone, they have lost to Espanyol, Real Betis and Valencia. They have spent most of the season missing their two best defenders, Éder Militão and Dani Carvajal. The front four of Mbappé, Vinícius, Jude Bellingham and Rodrygo have often appeared entirely disconnected from the rest of the team. And the only player who's looked like making sense of it all has been Dani Ceballos.
But here they are, in late April, with at least some chance of winning two major trophies -- three, if you count the inaugural Club World Cup. It makes you wonder: how good, or how bad, are this Real Madrid team, really? And is minor or major surgery required to make them Champions League contenders again?
"Compared to last year, we've lacked a bit of collective attitude," Ancelotti said last week, after Madrid's Champions League title defence came to an end. It was a typically understated, but also damning assessment of his team's season, and his own inability to successfully knit his players into a cohesive unit. Because isn't "collective attitude" what a team sport like football is all about?
One of Ancelotti's favourite phrases during Madrid's 2023-24 Double-winning campaign was "collective commitment," constantly praising the side's lack of egos, and the willingness of superstars like Bellingham and Vinícius to put their talents at the service of the team. In 2024-25, that's disappeared. And Ancelotti has admitted as much. "We've lacked a bit of balance in the team ... It's a collective problem," he said in February, and added last month: "We've been clinical up front, and less solid in defence. Those are the characteristics of the team this year."
That same month, before Real squeezed past Atlético Madrid on penalties in the Champions League round of 16, Ancelotti offered a binary assessment of his squad. "There are two types of players," he said. "Those who run, and those who make the difference. You can't be in the middle. Either you run, or you make the difference."
And too often this season, running has been the issue. Against Arsenal, in the first leg in London, Madrid's players covered 101.2 kilometres (62.8 miles), compared to Arsenal's 113.9km. In the second leg, when Madrid -- spurred on by the Bernabéu crowd -- needed to produce another miraculous European remontada (comeback), they covered 108.1km, compared to Arsenal's 117.6km.
"You always give yourself a better chance if you run more," said midfielder Bellingham, who has cut a frustrated figure lately. "Fourteen kilometres is almost the equivalent to [what] one player [covers], so logically, it impacts the game. Last year was similar. We didn't always run the most, but we were in organised positions, knowing where to run, what spaces to cover. It's about finding a balance: running a lot, and knowing where to run."
On any number of metrics, there has been a drop-off between the team's defensive performance between 2023-24 and 2024-25. Madrid conceded 26 goals in 38 LaLiga games last season, or 0.68 goals per game. They have conceded 31 in 32 this campaign -- 0.97 goals per game, so far. It's a difference for which even the addition of Mbappé, with his firepower, hasn't been able to compensate. In 2023-24, Madrid's players made 1,766 ball recoveries over 38 league games, winning the ball back an average of 46.5 times per game. In 2024-25, they've made 1,298 ball recoveries so far, averaging 40.6 recoveries per game.
Bellingham is right: distance covered isn't everything. But it's an eye-catching statistic that Mbappé and Vinícius are the two outfield players, in all of LaLiga, who spend the most time walking, rather than running. Maybe a team can afford to accommodate one difference-making star forward who prefers to conserve their energy out of possession. But can they afford to embrace two? Mbappé, Vinícius and Bellingham have contributed plenty in attack -- the trio have 56 goals and assists in LaLiga between them, although both Vinícius (11 goals, five assists) and Bellingham (eight goals, seven assists) are down on last season's tallies -- but there's been a weakening of the team as a whole.
"Sometimes, maybe we have to play more as a team, and less as individuals," goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois said after losing to Arsenal at the Bernabéu. "If [opponents] double-mark Viní or Kylian, it's two-on-one. [A goal] might come off once, but not three, four or five times ... We put a lot of crosses in, but this year we don't have a Joselu to win those duels, to be a natural centre-forward up front."
Madrid played 43 crosses in that game, with Joselu and Rodrygo providing 11 each, and Lucas Vázquez delivering five. As game plans go, it felt rudimentary, and a little desperate.
After a disappointing European exit, the mood around Real Madrid is low and Ancelotti's future is in doubt. But they still have the Copa del Rey final and are battling for the LaLiga title with a team packed full of stars. How much needs to change for them to be back to their best?
Courtois' name-check of Joselu -- a useful squad player, on loan from Espanyol, who single-handedly fired Madrid into last season's Champions League final in extremis, with a three-minute brace against Bayern Munich as a substitute at the Bernabéu -- was a reminder of what this year's squad are missing. Players like Joselu (with 10 league goals) and another departure, club captain Nacho (with 29 league appearances), weren't stars, or even guaranteed starters. But they have been missed, above all as characters and example-setters, as has Carvajal -- still present, but absent since October with a serious knee injury. Other veterans like Luka Modrić, 39, and 33-year-old Vázquez have remained but are showing their present-day limitations.
Madrid's squad-building -- both going into this season, and when given the chance to reassess in January -- has been exposed as undercooked and over-optimistic. The shortage at centre-back, with no replacement for Nacho, has been dealt with by the fortuitous emergence of Raúl Asencio, 22. But Vázquez has not been able to adequately deputise for Carvajal, and the retirement of Toni Kroos left a vacuum in the heart of the team. Kroos was the midfield conductor, effortlessly setting the tempo. Ceballos has done his best to compensate, his Kroos-esque 95% pass completion in LaLiga being the squad's best.
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Will crashing out of the Champions League -- with a verdict yet to be delivered in LaLiga and the Copa del Rey -- be enough to spur Madrid into remedying these shortcomings this summer? The first arrival is expected to be a right-back in Liverpool's Trent Alexander-Arnold. A source told ESPN last month that Madrid are now "very optimistic" about signing the 26-year-old, the latest -- after Mbappé, Antonio Rüdiger and David Alaba -- in a series of free-transfer signings of high-profile players in their peak years. It remains to be seen how the England international would co-exist with a fit-again Carvajal, a very different kind of full-back, and not yet over the hill at 33.
ESPN has also reported that Madrid have been looking closely at a move for Bournemouth and Spain centre-back Dean Huijsen, as another step in rejuvenating the defence. There would be competition for the 20-year-old from the Premier League, though, and his €50 million release clause would represent a substantial investment.
Madrid's income is rising, topping €1 billion in 2023-24. It is expected to grow again in 2024-25, with increasing matchday revenue from the Bernabéu, where the refurbishment project is nearly complete. But Madrid are still reluctant to spend big on transfer fees, for anything less than the very best young talent globally.
New recruits will only strengthen the team so far, if a functioning system can't be found into which they can fit. And this is where criticism of Ancelotti -- a manager with unmatched experience, who has delivered two Champions Leagues and two LaLiga titles since returning to the club in 2021 -- is loudest, and truest.
When available, the Italian has insisted on picking all four of Mbappé (29 league appearances), Rodrygo (29), Vinícius and Bellingham (both 26) in the same XI. That hasn't proved easy to square with Ancelotti's preference for an old-school shape when out of possession. "My preferred system is 4-4-2 without the ball," Ancelotti said on Sunday. "Defensively, I think it's the best system."
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But defensively is just where this team has struggled to convince, with those four players crammed into the side, and often unwilling to track back. And whether by personal preference, or under pressure from executive level, Ancelotti has been unwilling to drop one of the forwards for an extra body in midfield. Would a new coach be bold enough, or have more leeway, to act differently? Or would they be subject to just the same constraints, and in-house politics?
Ancelotti refused to discuss his future under repeated questioning in a news conference on Saturday, limiting himself to denying any behind-the-scenes rift with Pérez and the club. "There's no clash. We're all in the same boat," he said, pointing to the trophies still at stake. "I don't want to talk about my future today."
But when punting any verdict on the team, and his job, until "the end of the season," Ancelotti wouldn't say whether that meant before, or after, the Club World Cup.
Madrid play their first group game against Al Hilal in Miami on June 18, with the final taking place on July 13. FIFA's new tournament is an additional complication for any planned summer changing of the guard. Under normal circumstances, a coach could be fired at the end of the domestic season in late May, and a replacement appointed with months to bed in and prepare for the new campaign in mid-August.
If the decision has been made to part ways with Ancelotti, it wouldn't make much sense to keep him around for the Club World Cup. But equally, it would be highly unusual for a successor, such as Bayer Leverkusen's Xabi Alonso -- who has long been reported by ESPN to be Madrid's No. 1 choice -- to begin their reign by diving headfirst into a tournament, with what is effectively still another coach's team. An interim, internal appointment for the Club World Cup, such as the reliable former manager Santi Solari, now the club's director of football, or RM Castilla coach Raúl González might prove an attractive compromise.
But the Club World Cup is still two months away. Madrid play a cup final Clásico in three days' time, and six title-deciding league games in the next month, starting with Getafe away, and peaking when they face Barcelona again at Montjuïc on May 11.
If Madrid's meek Champions League exit felt like the beginning of the end, their performance in those seven matches -- especially the pair against Barcelona -- will seal Ancelotti's fate, and dictate how radical a rebuild is required this summer.
