Real Madrid make the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Again | Sid Lowe
Part of the reason attendances at the Bernabéu are down this season is simple: Real Madrid are not very good
Santi Solari was right, but he got it so very wrong. First they attacked him for what he said, then they attacked him for what he did. Others, meanwhile, just gave up and walked away, leaving him standing where Real Madrid managers so often stand: alone. On Saturday, two days after his team had been held 2-2 at Villarreal on their return from the winter break and winning the Club World Cup, the hounds released, Solari insisted that draws shouldn’t be “underestimated”; as if to prove the point, a prisoner of his words, the next day they were beaten 2-0 by Real Sociedad at the Bernabéu, the league seeming to slip out of sight again on the first weekend of 2019 – 20 games ahead of time.
The league and some of the fans too: there weren’t that many of them anyway – at 53,412, this was Madrid’s second worst attendance in a season in which they’re already averaging 6,000 fewer than last year – and when Rubén Pardo headed in a second for Real Sociedad, finally making the game safe, lots of those who were there headed for the exit. Some whistled, some waved hankies, a few even demanded resignations, but most departed in silence, resigned to it all, symbolic somehow. Others might, but they weren’t about to accept this.