5 Things Learned from Real Madrid's 2015-16 Liga Season

Where do you start?

After the most tumultuous of seasons, it's difficult to get your head around Real Madrid. As is often the case, Madrid have defied logic and reason again in 2015-16, and this is a club surrounded more by questions than conclusions after a campaign of spectacular contradictions—even for their standards. 

On the final day of the season, Madrid were still fighting but no one really no knows how. In Europe, the club has reached another UEFA Champions League final despite taking a path of turmoil to reach it. In Zinedine Zidane, the club now has the sort of manager it needs but how he was turned to was not by design—it was a desperate Hail Mary. 

What does one make of Real Madrid, then? Has this season been good, bad or just plain ridiculous? Does the Champions League change everything that's happened in La Liga? What do we know for sure?

It's difficult, but across the following slides, we've attempted to make some sense of it, settling on five conclusions we can draw from it all. 

Real Madrid Can Do Chaos Like No Other

Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images

No one does it quite like Real Madrid. As mentioned on the opening slide, this has been the most turbulent of seasons, and the following are the details of how the club spent an entire campaign in the sort of serenity associated with a bar fight. 

Try this on for chaos:

• Sacked a manager they liked and hired one they didn't
• Made the most awkward hash of Iker Casillas' exit
• Had a summer-long dispute with Sergio Ramos
• Signed a €31.5 million headache at right-back
• Bungled the David De Gea transfer
• Spent a ridiculous pre-season in four countries across three continents
• Endured six months of player-manager tension
• Saw a rift between players and medical staff persist
• Allowed politics to destroy them in the Clasico
• Fielded Denis Cheryshev in that game
• Couldn't escape the off-field headlines—Karim Benzema, James Rodriguez and Isco
• Sacked the manager they didn't like for one who'd never managed
• Were handed a transfer ban
• Handcuffed themselves at Real Betis
• Ditto at home in the Madrid derby 
• And don't forget: Blamed everyone else for everything

Chaos, huh?

Reputations Matter

JAVIER SORIANO/Getty Images

If there was ever a single detail that summed up how reputations matter, it was the use of Casemiro at Real Madrid this season:

• Rafa Benitez uses Casemiro: "too defensive"
• Zinedine Zidane uses Casemiro: "he gives balance"

Casemiro was excellent under both men, but only one of them could justify his inclusion to everyone who exists in the swirl of self-interest that surrounds Madrid. 

For Benitez, the influence of the defensive midfielder was viewed as symbolic of his perceived negative style amid an ideological war. And Benitez could never win that war. He lacked the aura to win allies. There was no charisma. His authority was non-existent.

In contrast, Zidane strode in with his iconic status and handled it with ease. When he was asked about specific personnel decisions, his discourse was essentially: "Because it's my decision."

When Zidane spoke, people shut up and listened; when Benitez spoke, they basically told him to shut up. 

And it didn't matter that the same issues were being discussed. 

Cristiano Ronaldo Has More Left in the Tank Than We Thought

Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images

It was at the Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan where the sensations hit their peak. 

Real Madrid had just collapsed against Sevilla in November, and Cristiano Ronaldo had been so ineffectual to the point of being anonymous. He looked detached, frustrated. The discontent was palpable, such little joy and spark evident.  

"Bad Vibes," said Marca. 

Those feelings lingered for a while thereafter, but then things changed. Well, not just things—everything. 

Goals started piling up and all those very-Ronaldo traits came flooding back: the explosiveness, the power, the swagger, the highlights, the intensity, the relentless streak. 

There was that left-footed thump against Espanyol. The right-footed version against Athletic Bilbao. The eruption against Celta Vigo. The late trampling of Barcelona. The strikes to sink Valencia. The 30-minute assault on Deportivo La Coruna to sign off. 

Ronaldo finished the league campaign with 35 goals, and he has cracked 50 in all competitions. Again. 

There's still plenty of juice left in that tank, it seems. 

This Team Will One Day Belong to Gareth Bale

CESAR MANSO/Getty Images

He was boss. And everyone knew it. 

It was against Rayo Vallecano and Real Sociedad that Gareth Bale demonstrated that this team will one day be his. In the former, Cristiano Ronaldo was out, and Karim Benzema limped off; in the latter, neither of them were there. 

On both occasions, Bale threw Madrid on his back and hauled them to victories, the first of them a come-from-behind 3-2 triumph in which the Welshman's dominance was so extreme that it was like his old Tottenham Hotspur days again: setting up everything, bolting past defenders with force, commanding attention and the ball and ripping the game open. 

At the end of a redeeming season, the numbers say much—19 goals in just 21 league starts—but it's what Bale has radiated recently that says more. The leadership. The belief. The look of being empowered. 

Soon, he'll be the guy.

Florentino Perez Still Hasn't Learned Anything

Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images

Barcelona, 91 points. Real Madrid, 90. 

The margins are fine, and such tallies remind one of a comment from Florentino Perez back in 2013. "Each year, we do the impossible in order to win, but they [Barcelona] always take it from us by two points or something like that," said the Real Madrid president while presenting his club's financial results. "I do not know why."

Everyone else does. 

In 2015-16, Perez has again shown that he's yet to learn anything from Madrid's ongoing domestic underachievement in his tenure. Still, the needless and complicating spending persists (Danilo), institutional upheaval is all too regular (Carlo Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez and Zinedine Zidane all managed the club in the space of eight months) and the continued absence of a sporting director ensures the whole thing goes on. 

Amid the tiny margins at the top of La Liga, this is what keeps Real Madrid behind Barcelona, and the numbers are damning. 

In the seven seasons of Perez's second stint as president, Madrid have won one league title. If you add the last three seasons of his first stint, that tally becomes one in 10. 

One. 

In 10.