From today's Times:
'Galácticos no more, Real Madrid have broken up on their headlong re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere, a descent marked by the flashes of red as the stars explode, extinguished for their petulance by a series of stern-faced referees. First it was Luis Figo, then Zinedine Zidane and then, on Sunday, even the golden sun, David Beckham, suffered an eclipse.
"Defeat can turn a gentleman into a hooligan," As, the Madrid football daily, remarked, its front page showing Beckham leaving the pitch under the words "Goodbye Asia", a brilliantly obscure headline that tells you exactly what the generally well-informed paper knows about his future. El País commented that his insult "was his last act of the season and possibly his last in a Madrid shirt". Bye bye, Bernabéu, hello Stamford Bridge.
The headline in Marca, the other Madrid football paper, said: "This Madrid is totally impotent," and pointed out that Carlos Queiroz, the Real coach, had made history by leading his team to four consecutive defeats. The latest defeat — all the more bitter because it allowed Barcelona to slip past Real into second place with one match to go — was at the hands of Murcia, relegation-bound almost since the season began.
Like a philanderer whose jilted lovers line up to stick the knife in, bad karma has caught up with Real. It began in March in the Spanish Cup final, which they lost to Real Zaragoza, a match in which Gabriel Milito, a Madrid reject, played a starring role. Fast-forward to the European Cup quarter-finals when another spurned merengue, Fernando Morientes, on loan to AS Monaco, did rather more than his bit to put them out of the competition. So, with only the league to play for, they promptly lost 3-0 at home to Osasuna in a match dominated by Valdo, another ex with an axe to grind. Cue Samuel Eto’o, of Cameroon, the African footballer of the year, holder of an Olympic gold medal, two African Nations Cups, one European Cup and one Spanish Cup but not good enough ultimately for Real, who signed him when he was 15 and then packed him off to Mallorca four years later. Eto’o scored two brilliant goals in Mallorca’s 3-2 defeat of Real.
Against Murcia, it was a double whammy. Both goals were scored by Luis García, another Real reject. And who was that grinning on the bench? None other than John Toshack, who in 1991 was dismissed as Real coach three months after leading them to the title with a record 107 goals. Revenge always tastes sweet, however late it is served.'