Zinedine Zidane has to win the Champions League final against Liverpool of face losing his job

Zinedine Zidane has to win the Champions League final against Liverpool of face losing his job

The Madrid manager may have won successive European titles but that will not save him from the chop.

IT is a truth universally acknowledged around the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, that a Real president who ends a season not in possession of a good trophy, must be in want of a new coach.

That is the situation in which current Madrid helmer Zinedine Zidane finds himself ahead of Saturday’s Champions League final against Liverpool. Even with the former galactico having guided his team to victory in the biggest club competition in both his previous seasons in charge.

Because Bernabeu chief Florentino Perez has always reacted to a campaign ending without any major trophy won by changing coach - with the most recent example being Carlo Ancelotti pushed out just 12 months after delivering the long awaited 'Decima' European Cup in 2014.

Perez gets a lot of criticism for such a trigger-happy approach, as he did all the way back in 2003 when Vicente Del Bosque was fired just hours after winning that season’s La Liga title, having secured the Champions League in two of the previous three years.

But it is also true that the extra-demanding club president has got a lot of things right during recent years, especially since Jose Mourinho finally left after three turbulent and ultimately unsuccessful seasons in 2013.

Perez and his close circle of advisors has been quick to react to any signs of complacency or drift within a galactico-heavy squad which has won three of the four UCL finals since Mourinho left. Ancelotti was fired after [only] reaching the semi-finals because he was too soft on the dressing-room when performances dipped for most of that season.

Madrid's 2017/18 campaign has featured quite a few similar warning signs - with bid to retain the La Liga crown was over almost before it begun, and a far from vintage Barcelona side eased to the domestic title with a whopping 17-point advantage over third placed Madrid.

Finishing behind neighbours Atletico for just the second time in two decades will also have hurt at the Bernabeu.

Florentino is especially sensitive to anything which can be seen as humiliation - and being knocked out of the Copa del Rey at home by humble neighbours Leganes certainly counts there. Winning just 17 of 30 games in front of their own fans across all competitions, including defeats to Real Betis and Villarreal, was not good enough. December's 0-3 La Liga Clasico reverse to Barcelona really displeased the VIP area of the stadium, while scares at home against both Juventus and Bayern Munich in the Champions League edged the mood close to revolution on both occasions.

Zidane himself is well aware of all this, having spent five years at Madrid as a player, and then observing closely from a variety of different positions at the club before he replaced Rafa Benitez in January 2016. Just last week the Frenchman was asked whether he felt he needed to be the first manager ever to guide a team to three consecutive European Cups to keep his job for next season.

“I’m not going to say yes or no,” he said. “What happens will happen.

I am very positive, thinking just about doing everything to win, not about anything else. But you know that here, what counts are results, nothing else. We started the season well, winning three trophies [European and Spanish Supercups, then Club World Cup]. For us it went a bit worse in the Copa and in La Liga. But now we are in the Champions League final and will give everything, to again defend our title.”

There have also been some ripples in the previously smooth Zidane / Florentino relationship,

especially around transfer matters. The ultimate Bernabeu boss was said to have been particularly angry at the coach’s temerity in publicly intervening to block the signing of Athletic Bilbao goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga last January.

The word “failure” came up more than once at Tuesday’s official UEFA media open day at Madrid’s Valdebebas training ground. Zidane was keen to respond by saying the team had complied with his own personal understanding of success.

“There is no failure here,” he said. “My failure was when we lost in the Copa del Rey at home, that was a tough blow. The rest, not at all.

Real always wants to win everything, but you cannot do it always. What you can do is give maximum commitment day to day, and if you do that, there is no failure. Life has ups and downs, and to progress you must take blows sometimes. But the day to day work, what we are doing, is enough for me.”

Whether such commitment to the daily toil is “enough” for Florentino remains to be seen. Madrid are big favourites to win comfortably on Saturday, and few in Spain have really countenanced a Liverpool win.

On the radio on Monday night Del Bosque said no Liverpool player would improve Madrid’s squad [“not even Salah”] and predicted a 4-1 win for his former club.

If that prediction comes true then Zidane will again be feted as the perfect coach for this Madrid squad, and Florentino once more take the praise for appointing him. But should the team disappoint in the highest profile game of all, the mood will be radically different.

Then the Bernabeu hierarchy, Jane Austen fans or not, will likely again be on the hunt for a new coach for next year.

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