Who is to blame for Real Madrid’s humiliating 4-0 loss to Barcelona?

Real Madrid lost 4-0 to their biggest and eternal rivals, Barcelona, in their most important game of the season so far. No context, quotes, or comparison makes it better. A 4-0 loss at a time like this — when Real Madrid desperately needed to win to catch up to the already high-flying Catalans — does not need context or justification. It can’t be justified, especially with a team like this.

There is a debate among the Real Madrid fanbase — who is to blame for this embarrassing, unacceptable and gut-wrenching defeat? Who is responsible for the fans seeing the opposite of what they expected when Real Madrid announced, just two days after winning their 15th Champions League title, that they had signed Kylian Mbappe?

It would make a little more sense if Real Madrid were the team undergoing a massive rebuild, without a lot of money to spend, and without the world’s biggest stars. Instead, that is, for the most part, Barcelona — they signed one or two good players, saw big injuries to their best players, had an ageing Robert Lewandowski to start the season, and look at them now: It’s a mix of rejuvenation, revival and youth. Barcelona have found an amazing mixture of what was needed, throwing their La Masia graduates into the deep end and seeing who can swim. Right now, everyone in Catalonia is swimming, while Real Madrid — the better-run club with better players and more success in the last decade — look like a sinking ship.

That is something that has always bothered Real Madrid fans, and it is a case of rightful jealousy — how Barcelona can start 17-year-olds in big games and see them succeed, while at Madrid, it is tougher. In the last 10 years, Real Madrid have had really good players come out of their academy and Castilla. Some of them have been sold, and some of them are still around, but it wasn’t until after they had proven their worth that these players started getting minutes with the first team. With Barcelona, it has almost always been the polar opposite — if you’re good enough, you’re old enough.

However, it is worth noting that all’s not lost, and it shouldn’t be, as Ancelotti put it in his press conference. One of the quotes that were actually plausible from that presser was that the season is not defined by one loss. The league will be hard to win now, but there is the Champions League, the Copa Del Rey. There are things Real Madrid can win. While the loss may not be season-defining just yet, it has perfectly shown Real Madrid’s deficiencies from top to bottom — on the pitch, in the dugout and the higher-ups. To answer the question from above, everyone is to blame.

Real Madrid are only 14 games into the season, and have not once looked like the team everyone expected them to be when the season started (they did for one half against Borussia Dortmund, but that is it). Everyone expected an unbeatable force who would play beautiful football, with Vinicius Jr and Kylian Mbappe at the forefront. It hasn’t quite worked out for them so far. That’s not to say it won’t, but there is a lot that needs to change for that to happen.

The players seem a bit lethargic, and as Guillermo Rai of The Athletic put it, they understand they have not reached their physical heights. Real Madrid are a group of ridiculously athletic players. Seeing them running 10 kilometres less than their eternal rivals in their backyard shows an underlying problem that should be mentioned much more than it has been.

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Mbappe, the elephant in the room, was touted to be the final piece of the jigsaw. This jigsaw was that of a potential European dynasty that would dominate football for years to come. He joined the club which had already won the Champions League without him. It should’ve been an upgrade, but he has not been performing the way everyone expected him to. Sometimes, it takes time. It’s understandable. What is not understandable is breaking the wrong records in the biggest of games. It genuinely did not make sense that Mbappe, a player claimed by many to be the best in the world, was being toyed with by Barcelona’s young backline. He kept falling for the same offside trap over and over, and it seemed like he was shocked that the referee had called him offside in the first place. Sometimes, it is unacceptable.

Real Madrid knew beforehand the blueprint was there. It was right in front of Ancelotti’s eyes. One of two things happened: either it was not looked at, or it was looked at for too long. Real Madrid played long balls, scored two offside goals, and realised by the 60th minute that it wasn’t working. The offside trap was being used to perfection by their rivals, but they carried on doing the exact same thing for 30 more minutes — this time with a quarter of the energy they had in the first half.

Real Madrid showed that they had no plan B, and it was shocking. Everyone in the sold-out Bernabeu could see what was happening, that there was no tactical difference in what they did after conceding the first two goals. If you watch the first half and then the second half, you’d think they were two different games. Real Madrid did look good in the first half — very good — but we soon saw that once the gameplan stopped working, so did Real Madrid. They were lethargic — they were losing every single duel, misplacing passes, being offside on one end while keeping their rivals onside on the other in the biggest game of their season.

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It’s easy to blame it on one aspect of the club and call for it to be changed. That will likely happen. Hell, it is already happening — everyone is talking about either Mbappe, Ferland Mendy or Ancelotti. But, the truth is, the game against Barcelona was a colossal failure, from top to bottom. Everyone got it wrong. Everyone looked their worst version. It’s genuinely hard to remember a second-half performance as bad as the one the world saw on Saturday.

Credit to Hansi Flick. The second half was a masterclass from the German manager, who saw the deficiencies of the team in front of his own and made some impactful tactical changes. It’s funny and sad that Real Madrid, on paper, have a much superior team, but Barcelona, who had fielded two teenagers, looked more in sync with each other than Los Blancos have all season. If you take Robert Lewandowski out of the team, Barcelona’s average age was less than 23 years, less than 25 with him.

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This was not a season-ending loss. It can’t be, but everything matters on how Real Madrid will react to this gut-wrenching defeat. Real Madrid look lost for the first time in years. They seem to be without direction. They are shunned. They will improve, there is no doubt about it. The players will definitely come back to their best, and things will start to click. But the team’s horrors from this game will be in the minds of most big teams yet to face Real Madrid, and how Los Blancos play in those games will be so much more important. How Ancelotti will try to change stuff on the tactical end is also a talking point. Real Madrid have not clicked, yet, but when will they? Will this be a recurring theme — relying on Thibaut Courtois’ heroics all season and expecting Vinicius to have an outstanding game to bail the team out from further embarrassment?

Relying on individual brilliance can take you very far, but there are some games, like on Saturday, like the game against Manchester City two seasons ago, where you need something more than that. Real Madrid may end up with a different manager next season — possibly Xabi Alonso, who could fix some of those issues — but they need to hope Ancelotti starts doing more of what he did last season, compared to what he is doing right now. Replicating all that without Toni Kroos to be your ‘coach’ on the pitch is difficult, but what’s easy in football, anyway?

Things need changing, and Real Madrid need to find their feet. No competition is lost at the moment. However, the players are, and Ancelotti needs to figure out a way to bring them back to life so that he can retain a league title for the first time in his illustrious, 29-year managerial career.