Thursday, June 28, 2007

We won! Congratulations! You're fired

Real Madrid's first La Liga title in four years was not enough to save Fabio Capello from the firing squad as Real sacked Capello less than two weeks after winning the Spanish league title.

Club sporting director Predrag Mijatovic said it was a difficult but unanimous decision and that the club felt that Capello was not the right person "to lead Real Madrid into the future given what we want this club to achieve."

Am I the only person who finds this completely strange? I understand the pressure cooker Real Madrid and any European giant is under but to fire a coach under these circumstances is still strange, to me at least. Real Madrid failed in the Champions League and that must have played a role as well, and winning the league title apparently did not offset that.

Can anyone try and justify this firing?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Typical. I think he wanted to leave. He screwed up by dissing and later benching Beckham. He was following the lead of Calderon who also dissed Becks.
Capello should not have been fired, either way.
Maybe he can come to the MLS.

Anonymous said...

I think it is pretty much all about Beckham. It was a pretty embarassing scenario to have Capello so publically jetison Beckham, have his players side with Beckham and then have to crawl back to Beckham to help lift the team to the championship. That much crow eating probably did not sit very well.

Anonymous said...

i dont follow La Liga but didn't Barcelona implode mid season? maybe Real Madrid recognized that they only won b/c of that.

Anonymous said...

There is a simple justification: they had already made an offer to another coach and gotten an acceptance long before season's end (i think it is a german guy), in a situation similar to the Jeff Cassar-Real Salt Lake deal. It was too late to back out after their miracle run, and equity requires the down-low contract to be honored...

Anonymous said...

I think its because Calderon fell asleep watching Madrid play and was fearing there might be a coup during one of the games.

Capello simply bored his way to the summit of La Liga, as he's done with every other club he's managed.

Seriously though, I think it is because Schuster was already picked to lead the club.

Dave said...

They're following the LA Galaxy Sigi Schmid model.