Carlo’s work in Madrid is not done yet
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Carlo Ancelotti’s work this season is an interesting paradox. The club is in the quarter-finals of the Champions League and is confidently striding towards the title of La Liga, but for the second month the Italian has been living in a stream of rumors about his dismissal.  The first wave rose after the defeat in the first match against PSG. AS wrote that Florentino Perez was horrified by Carlo’s defensive tactics and began looking for a coach for the new season. Mauricio Pochettino was mentioned among the contenders. The second wave is more of a fan dissatisfaction, but after 0-4 in the clasico with Anchi’s obvious mistakes, calls to leave were indecently frequent. Ancelotti’s case captivates with its contrast. It’s already April, and Real Madrid didn’t have a solid unambiguously positive top match (and there were a number of failures in such meetings). On the other hand,any transition from particulars to the big picture will be in favor of Carlo– in the summer, the fans would gladly accept a confident championship in La Liga and the quarter-finals of the Champions League. This is definitely not a job that deserves to be fired or even rumored to be fired. Paradoxically, the ease with which Madrid go to the title, play against Carlo – makes the task seem easier than it really is. But objective starting expectations were different. Before the start of the season, Real Madrid lost a couple of main defenders Ramos-Varane – only David Alaba came in instead (again – now it looks like a masterful exchange, when we know how someone did it, but then it caused great concern). At the center of the project was still the age backbone (Modric, Kroos, Benzema and Casemiro – a veteran by status, but not by age), the need to rebuild which Zinedine Zidane saw back in 2018. Once again, it’s tempting to take it for granted, but squeezing another top season out of them in the summer didn’t seem like a trivial task (in the case of Modric and Benzema, we’re talking about the best season of their careers).

 

Interesting findings regarding Real Madrid

The bookmakers did not even consider Madrid the main favorite – this role was given to Ronald Koeman’s Barcelona, and Real Madrid offered a coefficient of about 2.4. It’s not even the choice of another team that is important here (there was no certainty in Barca either), but the general uncertainty. Neither Real Madrid, nor Barcelona, ​​nor Atlético had input data that would allow them to name one team as a favorite. Waiting for the turbulent season. This is how it turned out for two of the three teams. Similar conclusions can be reached through the FiveThirtyEight model – it gives a projection based on the quality of the composition, the playing level and other factors. A good option if you need to measure objective expectations from teams.Real Madrid were given 24% for the championship and a projection of 75 points per season. The advantage of this approach is not only in objectivity, but also in the fact that we can see exactly how much the coach worsened or improved the team’s position relative to expectations. Team Ancelotti’s current performance is 93% for the championship and 85 points projection.