Casillas controversy engulfs Madrid

Manchester United's Champions League tie with Real Madrid looks even more interesting after Jose Mourinho dropped captain Iker Casillas for the Spanish champions'  latest defeat, writes Ben Lyttleton...

 

Christmas will be interesting in the household of Real Madrid president Florentino Perez this week. Just a few days after demanding that his coach Jose Mourinho ends this  season, certain to be his last of a tempestuous three years at the Santiago Bernabeu, winning the Copa del Rey, for which they are 1.03, and the Champions League, 5.7, the Portuguese has given him a fresh headache.

 

After all the debates about the team's style of play under Mourinho, the rows with Barcelona and the conspiracy after their Champions League defeat to them in 2011, and  the way Mourinho forced out sports director Jorge Valdano to gain overall control of more areas of the club, Mourinho crossed a Rubicon on Saturday night. He dropped his  captain, Iker Casillas, the captain of the team, the leader of the group, and left him on the bench for the game at Malaga.

 

Never mind that the other 10 players on the team were all seasoned internationals, nor that his replacement Adan was not at fault for any of the goals conceded: Casillas's  absence, and the storm surrounding it, must have played a part in the result. This was not the first time Mourinho has taken decisive action against a senior player - he  dropped Sergio Ramos for the European opener against Manchetser City, but becaue Madrid won, the gamble paid off.

 

He was not so lucky in Malaga; Madrid went down 3-2, two goals from Roque Santa Cruz proving decisive, for their second straight defeat. It leaves them 16 points behind  leaders Barcelona and with Mourinho potentially facing a battle to keep his job before the season is out. But it was dropping Casillas, which he claimed after the game was  "a technical decision", that has overshadowed this result. Sources close to the coach point out that ten of the 15 points Madrid have dropped this season have come from  set-pieces, an area opponents have pin-pointed as a Casillas weakness.

 

"Mourinho's move smacks as personal," said Sky Sports Spanish expert Graham Hunter. "It´s not simply defeat at Malaga which has exposed the dropping of Casillas as a  wrong headed and petulant move. It's clear to anyone but an idiot that Casillas has not being playing anywhere near badly enough to be dropped. If you could drop a  manager based on form Mourinho would be dropped long before Iker."  "He wants to do some killing before he is killed himself," added journalist Guillem Balague.

 

Before the game, Casillas had denied there were problems between him and Mourinho while earlier in the season, he took to Facebook to deny claims he was the  dressing-room mole in the squad leaking stories to the press.

 

"We didn't have a problem in goalkeeping, we had a general problem, a defensive problem," Mourinho said after the game. "We will perform better in Champions League and  Copa as well, we must be strong. I think to win the Liga is almost impossible. Am I afraid of being sacked? "Of course not. This is football. We know that football's  memories are short. Nothing else. I don't want to deny my responsibilities."

 

If this is a final challenge to Perez to sack him before the season is out, he might just lose it: after all, it will not have escaped the president that back in 1999, when Madrid  were in a similar mess, the club sacked John Toshack midway through the season, appointed Vicente del Bosque, and went on to win the Champions League.

 

It was poignant also that the Malaga coach was Manuel Pellegrini, sacked by Madrid after one year, in which he won more points (96) than Mourinho did in his first season  (92); and a man who never reacts to Mourinho's frequent barbs. "He was labeled a fool, hapless, insufficient," wrote Marca. "But through it all, the Chilean held his head high  and his tongue in check. Now Pellegrini may have very well doomed his replacement, Jose Mourinho."

 

One more comparison to make: when Mourinho left Chelsea in September 2007, it was after a poor run of results, a lack of discpine throughout the squad and an ultimately  decisive fall-out with one of his senior players (in that case, John Terry). Will it be a similar outcome this time?

 

And another team looking on with interest is Manchester United, their opponents in the Champions League draw. Madrid are 1.55 to reach the Champions League  quarter-final, with United 2.3. The Casillas controversy might be resolved by February, when the teams meet in the Round of 16 first leg, but Mourinho, whether he is there or not, will still be making headlines.

 

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