"Failure is on the road to success. This defeat is going to make me improve and it will make us all improve." Two months after one of the most humiliating nights in recent years, being overcome in extra time by a Second Division team, Álvaro Arbeloa predicted the short-term future of Real Madrid in the press room of Carlos Belmonte in Albacete. He did it with conviction amidst the doubts surrounding the dressing room, the club, and his own figure, elevated to first-team coach after several years in the Youth team and six months with Castilla. It seemed like little experience, but the Salamancan will land in April after having defeated Mourinho, Guardiola, and Simeone and still alive in the fight for the League and the Champions League.
"The players did not expect someone so prepared," sources close to the Real Madrid squad tell this newspaper. The team was coming from months of frustration, accumulating the helplessness of the final stretch of Carlo Ancelotti'sXabi Alonso's era, and the needs of a squad that was an incomplete puzzle. It didn't seem to have an easy solution, and Arbeloa was seen in Valdebebas as an emergency response. Almost a shot in the dark. A temporary patch before the arrival of a more established coach.
17 games later, the feeling is different, especially after a March that could be crucial in the rookie coach's project. The defeat in Albacete in the Copa del Rey, in Lisbon in the last match of the Champions League group stage, and against Osasuna and Getafe in the league seemed to completely derail the season for the Whites, but in recent weeks, the coach and the group have reacted. Each in their own way.
The coaching staff and the dressing room had a group talk after losing to Getafe, with José Ángel Sánchez, the club's general director, also present. That conversation was important to lay bare the team's problems, but the key has been Arbeloa. Taking advantage of the misfortune of Bellingham and Mbappé's injuries, the coach has created a committed and solid Madrid. A team built around Rüdiger, Tchouaméni, Valverde, and Vinicius, with Huijsen, Güler, or Brahim as luxury substitutes. Additionally, Arbeloa's bet on Thiago Pitarch has served as a stimulus for part of the squad, who have seen the coach's courage with the youth academy as a huge warning.
"He talks to them like an older brother, as if he has known them all his life," they explain at the Valdebebas sports city. That famous "grey sofa" that Arbeloa has mentioned in several press conferences has served as a group psychologist. Vinicius, Valverde, or Brahim have passed through there, the latter just a couple of weeks ago, to try to reconnect the group with reality. Three vital names for the dressing room that have grown in importance in March. "He is direct and very clear with them. And in football terms, he explains things very simply. He makes it easy for them," voices close to the dressing room insist.
The most commented aspect has been how Arbeloa has tried to approach the group through public praise, sometimes exaggerated, but all those statements have resonated with a squad that has shown to react better to affection. "I have a great team. When they are as involved as they are now, when they have that mentality... I want the power of friendship to be demonstrated. Before, I had the feeling that we went out to play depending on talent, on what each one came up with. We have to have an idea and a style," he reflected on Sunday after winning the derby.
From the failure in Albacete to an extraordinary March, there are two months and a completely different Madrid now led by the "big brother" Arbeloa.