Real Madrid's Derby Defeat Sparks Criticism of Players

The knives are out in Madrid, and this time they are not pointed at the dugout.

After the 2-1 derby defeat to Atletico, Real Madrid head into the international break in fourth place, six points behind a rampant Barcelona after seven La Liga rounds. The table tells one story. The radio phone-ins are telling another: this is a team that has stopped running.

On Cope’s flagship late-night show “El Partidazo”, the verdict was brutal and almost unanimous. The problem, callers and pundits agreed, is not Carlo Ancelotti. It is not Xabi Alonso. It is not Alvaro Arbeloa. It is the players.

“Not with Carlo Ancelotti, not with Xabi Alonso, not with Alvaro Arbeloa,” he said. “The players continue not to put in the effort and not to show solidarity among themselves.”

The accusation cuts to the core of what Madrid fans demand: intensity, pride, a collective willingness to suffer. In the derby, Lama argued, that was nowhere to be seen.

He highlighted one sequence that, for him, summed up the malaise. When Atletico began to circulate the ball calmly at the back, shifting it between the two centre-backs and the goalkeeper, Real Madrid simply stood off.

“If Atletico Madrid start passing the ball around, specifically between the two centre-backs and the goalkeeper, Real Madrid would not push forward to press them,” Lama said. “They would wait, and they did not even want to move forward to confront them.”

For a club that built its European dominance on suffocating pressure and ferocious transitions, the image of white shirts watching and waiting stings.

The criticism did not stop at attitude. It moved quickly into structure, talent and the very way this Real Madrid side is built.

Journalist Paco Gonzalez took the baton and went after the squad’s profile with the same force.

“This current Real Madrid does not have the players needed to play, with the exception of Guler,” he claimed. “Who is able to carry out an organised collective attack at Real with this current line-up? Tchouameni, Bellingham, but the rest, all they offer are individual movements.”

The names he picked out tell their own story. Aurélien Tchouameni and Jude Bellingham, two of the club’s standard-bearers for the future, are praised for their ability to fit into a collective idea. Arda Guler, still waiting for a real run in the team, is held up as the only true “footballer” in the creative sense.

Gonzalez pushed the point harder.

“Real Madrid get a 10 physically when you watch them, so physically they can beat anyone,” he said. “But in order to play football, there is only Guler.”

In other words: the legs are there, the lungs are there, the athleticism is there. The football, in his view, is not.

The debate even stretched to ball progression and build-up play, another area where the team came under fire. Gonzalez argued that some of the players simply do not have the technical profile to support the style Madrid are trying to impose.

“Konate and Dumfries do not have a good ability to bring the ball out from the back,” he said. “It is a huge problem relating to the style of play and the players.”

For the callers and pundits locked into the Madrid bubble, the conclusion was stark: this is not just a blip or a bad night at the Metropolitano. This feels like a structural issue, a clash between what the club wants to be and what this squad can actually deliver.

The table says Real Madrid are still in the race. The airwaves say something else: unless the players start running, pressing and playing as a unit, the gap to Barcelona will be the least of their problems.