• Marca says 'Goodbye Pellegrini' after Champions
League exit
• El Mundo says Real Madrid defeat in last 16 is 'catastrophic'
Manuel Pellegrini is under pressure from the
Spanish media after Real Madrid were knocked out of the Champions
League.
The campaign to remove the Real Madrid
coach, Manuel Pellegrini, has already begun following
their Champions
League elimination to Lyon in the Bernabéu
last night.
Real, who spent £240m on players during the summer including
Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaká, expected to fare better in a
competition they have won a record nine times, and despite a vote
of confidence from the club's director general, Jorge Valdano, the
Spanish media appear to have made up their minds about the future
of Pellegrini, launching a series of savage attacks on the Chilean
coach.
The front page of the influential Madrid-based newspaper Marca
this morning says, "Adiós Champions, Adiós Pellegrini. Fuera",
which translates as the unequivocal message, "Goodbye Champions
[League], Goodbye Pellegrini. Out".
This is the sixth successive season Real Madrid have been
knocked out at the first knockout stage of the Champions League and
with the final to be held at the Bernabéu this defeat has been
particularly hard to accept.
"You don't buy titles, you win them," the columnist José Samano
wrote in El País following the last-16 defeat to Lyon.
"When the ball is in play it's the business of the players and
Hollywood-style theatre is irrelevant," he added. "Everything is
possible in sport except for those who consider the pitch a stock
market."
The hyperbole reached new heights with the opinion of Orfeo
Suárez in El Mundo. "The catastrophe suffered by this pharaonic
Madrid team is as if an earthquake had destroyed the Valley of the
Kings.
"Watching the competition to which they owe their legend from
the sidelines will be their penitence and torment."
There was no let-up in ABC, where Julián Avila wrote about
"stratospheric spending" accompanied by the headlines "Sixth
galactic failure" and "More than €250 million down the drain".
"The jewel in the crown, Cristiano Ronaldo, Champions League
finalist in the past two seasons, is out of the tournament at his
first attempt in a white shirt," said Avila.
Elswhere, Carlos Marcote, writing in daily El Periódico, said
Florentino Pérez, the Real president, had failed in his attempt "to
bulldoze Madrid back to the summit of world soccer".
"Not even winning the league… will remove such a scandalous
stain, the worst in the recent history of Madrid given the such
lofty heights they were obliged to reach."
