Real Madrid Can Be Buoyed by Storming Late Run, but Old Habits Cost Them La Liga

For 15 minutes, the table said they were champions. Then came the news: Barcelona 1-0 Granada. Luis Suarez had been at it again, breaking the resistance, but for another 13 minutes there was still hope. Then came more news: Barcelona 2-0 Granada. Suarez. Again. 

Javier Mascherano had just played an exquisite diagonal ball to Dani Alves, who'd reached it just inside the byline at a full sprint to smash a pinpoint cross onto the head of the Uruguayan.

At that instant, everyone knew. 

This was the goal that clinched the Liga title for Barcelona and condemned Real Madrid to yet another second-place finish, but it was also more than that. This was a goal that summed up the essence of this incarnation of Barcelona: faster, more direct, fewer touches but added punch. The year of Suarez. 

It was Barcelona's identity in a single move, if you like—an identity that's stood above that of Madrid all season; one that's been protected and prioritised; one that continues to stand as a lesson for those in the capital.

"Barcelona deserved to win La Liga," admitted manager Zinedine Zidane at his post-match press conference after Madrid's 2-0 victory over Deportivo La Coruna, which continued his side's storming late run but mattered little. "But you've got to take your hat off to what we've done."

With both assertions, Zidane was correct.

This, after all, was a title race Madrid never should have been in but somehow were. For much of the season, chaos has reigned supreme at the Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid having continued their habit for getting in their own way. Yet concurrently, the extent of the change witnessed in Chamartin under Zidane remains significant. 

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From the day the Frenchman took over in January, the league table reads Madrid 53 points, Barcelona 52 and Atletico Madrid 47. Those 53 points have come from just 20 outings—one less than Barcelona's 21 in the same period given the Catalans had a game to make up following their trip to Japan to contest the FIFA Club World Cup in December—and represent the best 20-game start in history for a Real Madrid boss. 

The closing stretch has been more impressive: 12 games, 12 wins, a Clasico triumph and an aggregate score of 39-9.

It's about more than just the numbers, too; the sensations have been just as important. 

Steadily, Zidane has overseen an immense shift in dynamic at the Bernabeu. Los Blancos look less like a fragmented collection of stars and more like a unit. There's a certain harmony, Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale look capable of coexisting, the swirl of discontent and rifts has subsided and a sense of purpose, clarity and identity has grown.

It's that last one that's perhaps the big one, as it's what had eluded them until this run. 

Four months on, it's interesting to reflect on a comment from Sergio Ramos just after Zidane had replaced Rafa Benitez. "The change of coach has done us the world of good," Ramos told Onda Cero (h/t AS), mirroring the sentiment many of his team-mates hadn't been shy in expressing, either. "There's still a long way to go before the season ends. It's about how you finish, not how you start."

From Ramos, that line neatly applies to both him personally and the collective, yet it's also emblematic of the realisation Madrid continually fail to make: Everything matters. 

Everything? Yep, everything: how you start, how you spend your pre-season, how you conduct yourself in the summer, how you construct your squad, how your medical staff work, how your club is built without a sporting director, how your president interferes, how politics get in the way and how managers are undermined.

Indeed, winning league titles is about more than being good at putting the ball in the net and about how you finish. "This league is the ultimate gauge of consistency," said Andres Iniesta in the immediate aftermath of his team's title capture on Saturday, per Sky Sports.

It was a line that said it all. 

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For Barcelona, their entire season has been about consistency, thoughtful preparation, the careful management of workloads, the cultivation of a system and the continuation of a plan or that identity. 

Bumps have arrived along the way, of course, but the structure in place has allowed Luis Enrique's men to ride them out and recover. Injuries haven't derailed them. Neither has a gruelling season. Nor have temporary losses of form. 

They've triumphed because they don't get in their own way like Madrid do. 

Just think of the self-imposed damage the capital club has suffered this season: Madrid collapsed at Sevilla because they had no sense of who they were after needless summer upheaval; they were butchered in the first Clasico because Benitez succumbed to politics; they drew with Real Betis because price tags rather than logic determined team selection; Antoine Griezmann cut them apart in the derby because the defensive and un-Galactico-y Casemiro was still being marginalised. 

These are the habits Madrid either can't or don't want to shake, habits Barcelona don't have. The recent records say much: Madrid have won one league title in eight years; Barcelona have won six. 

"[A] success for club philosophy," said Marca of the Catalans' victory. That's exactly what it is: the triumph of a philosophy, an identity, a model of what works. 

For Madrid, what they've achieved under Zidane has been immensely impressive and is something to build on, but here they are anyway, second again.

It's all very familiar.

And so is the process that's led them there.

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