In association with:

Real Madrid savor 30th title success

Adjust font size:

(CNN) -- Of all Real Madrid's 30 Spanish titles, the one they clinched last weekend was perhaps the most hard-fought and the most savored.

Sunday's match with Real Mallorca played out in miniature the sort of season Madrid have had.

Falling behind to an early goal and struggling for fluency and attacking presence, they stubbornly fought their way back into the match in the second half to claim the win -- 3-1 -- they needed to seal the title thanks to two goals from substitute Jose Antonio Reyes and one from Mahamadou Diarra.

It is only a little over three months since Madrid were being written off as a club in terminal crisis, having won just one league match in six and gone out of the Champions League to Bayern Munich in the first knockout round.

But Real's fortunes started to turn in March with a 3-3 draw against Barca at the Nou Camp, when defeat would have established a near-insurmountable eight-point gap between the two, followed by six wins in seven matches culminating in a 3-2 win over Sevilla -- still in contention along with Barca for the title until Sunday's final round of matches.

With Italian coach Fabio Capello brought in at the start of the season to instill a new toughness into a side which, through the rise and fall of the Galacticos, had become a study in hubris and nemesis, Madrid have not won many plaudits for their style of play this season.

Nevertheless, Capello has steered them to a club record 11 wins away from home; evidence of a new resilience that has also allowed players such as Robinho to display flashes of the sort of brilliance their fans once took for granted.

In reality, the break with the big spending era of Zidane and Figo is more one of presentation and attitude than substance; Real still spent some $130 million at the start of the season on players including Italy's world footballer of the year award-winning defender Fabio Cannavaro.

But these days the emphasis is on the less flashy talents of the likes of Ruud van Nistelrooy -- with 25 goals this season -- and the midfielders Diarra and Emerson.

It is noteworthy as well that Madrid's best performances this season have coincided with the thaw in relations between Capello and David Beckham, who left the Bernabeu in glory on Sunday despite limping out of the match prior to Real's fightback.

The Italian had been distrustful of Brand Beckham since his arrival and vowed the player would never play for Madrid again after he announced that he would be leaving to join the Los Angeles Galaxy in the summer.

But the English midfielder's basic attributes of hard work and application in fact have proved a perfect match for the sort of commitment that Capello routinely demands of his players.

Beckham may have been spared the ignominy of leaving Madrid without a single trophy to his name in almost four years, but even a Spanish championship may not be enough to keep Capello in a job.

Capello says he would like to stay on but admits his chances are no better than "tossing a coin in the air."

He would not be the first Madrid coach to lose his job in a title-winning year, and, having remolded the club into a winning force again, Real's micromanagement-prone directors, may feel the time has come to restore some of the club's sparkle as well.

Tools:
Save |
Print |
E-mail |
Most Popular |

Next story in World Sport

World Sport

Desecrated cemetery declared crime scene

A Cook County cemetery where hundreds of graves were dug up and allegedly resold has been declared a crime scene, meaning that relatives of people believed ...