Real Madrid Faces Deeper Crisis Amid Alvaro Benito's Warnings

The numbers on the table do not scream disaster. Fourth in La Liga, 15 points from seven games. For most clubs, that is a solid launchpad.

For Real Madrid, it has triggered alarm.

The 2-1 derby defeat to Atletico at the Metropolitano has sharpened the debate around Florentino Perez’s grand project and the direction of the team under Jose Mourinho. The sense around the club is not just of a setback, but of a pattern that refuses to go away.

Alvaro Benito, the former Real Madrid player and now a sharp voice on Spanish radio, did not bother with diplomacy when he spoke to Cadena SER. His diagnosis cut straight to the core.

“Here the thinking needs to be much deeper,” he said, quoted by Sport. “If you have been seeing the same problems on the pitch for two and a half years, then the nature of these problems is exactly the same.”

The issue, in his eyes, goes beyond form, beyond a bad night in a hostile stadium.

“We do not see any change with the coaches, despite the different nature of each of them. So the problem is much deeper. Isn’t it? That is what I am saying.”

Same table, same problems

Madrid’s league position offers some cover, yet Benito keeps returning to one point: the performances. He referenced the recent win over Elche as proof that results can disguise the cracks but not repair them.

“The problems have persisted for two and a half years, and nothing has been solved,” he insisted. “You can win. For example, you won the last match against Elche, but the impression the team leaves at a collective level is that the same problems keep recurring.”

That word — “impression” — matters. Benito is not fixated on a single scoreline. He is talking about what Madrid look like over 90 minutes, week after week: the structure, the patterns, the decisions.

At the Metropolitano, he felt the script was almost inevitable.

“We could all have expected that, barring something exceptional, when you come to the Metropolitano stadium you would see what we in fact saw,” he said. “You could have won or lost, but I am not talking about losing or winning, because the road that leads to the result can take different paths.”

Even the details he raises underline his wider argument. He pointed to a key refereeing moment, involving Cuti Romero.

“If Cuti Romero had been sent off in the first half, then you might even have been able to win the match,” Benito noted. “I am talking about the collective impression, about the idea of play, what you offer, and which players you will put in the starting line-up in most matches.”

The Mourinho question

For Benito, the most striking element of this Madrid side is what it is not. Specifically, it is not a typical Jose Mourinho team.

He laid out the blueprint he expected to see.

“Mourinho historically relies on a very strong medium defensive block, a team with compact lines, ferocious pressing, winning the ball back and then attacking directly and quickly. Excellent.”

That is the Mourinho playbook that has defined so many of his teams: aggressive without the ball, ruthless with it, devastating on the counter. On paper, Benito believes, that model fits the squad Madrid currently possess.

“This style would be ideal for Real Madrid, given the characteristics of the players they have, but the problem is that we do not see it.”

That is the crux. Not just that Madrid are underperforming, but that they seem caught between ideas, with a coach whose trademark identity is not fully visible on the pitch.

Perez’s project was built on the promise of control — in the market, in the dugout, in the title race. Instead, seven games into the league season, Madrid find themselves staring at a more uncomfortable question:

What exactly are they trying to be?