The Athletic FC

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ayo Akimwalere.

On Saturday, Real Madrid players and the President

Florentino Perez were booed by fans.

On Tuesday, Real Madrid won emphatically in the Champions League

as they beat Monaco and it seemed to get the fans back

on side. But is Perez still in hot water?

Okay, here with us today we have our Real Madrid correspondent, Gelerma Rai, and also Dermot Corrigan

as well. Gentlemen, let's get into this. Dermott, we'll get to Perez soon, but let's discuss what has been,

I guess, a tumultuous time for Madrid. I mean, nothing new really. Alonzo Sacked, fan protests.

Can you just bring us round as to what on earth has been going on? Yeah, tumultuous is definitely the word.

There's always drama at Real Madrid. It's one of the fun parts of the job. It's following all the drama at Real Madrid. But even for Real Madrid, the last couple of weeks, have been pretty spectacular. Jabby Alonso, coach who was appointed last season, was under pressure through the autumn. It looked like he may have saved his job. But then they were beaten in the Super Copa by Barcelona. They flew back from

Saudi Arabia and the following day Jabbi Alonso was fired. Then Arvalho stepped up from the

U-team coach to take over the job. His first game in charge brought Copa Del Rey humbling exit

at second tier Abbasetti the first time in history that Al-a-SeddiI had ever beaten Real Madrid on the super dramatic circumstances also with a last-minute goal for Alba Sete.

That really got a lot of the Real Madrid fans upset, the combination of all those factors.

And at the weekend at the home game against Levanti, there was an outpouring of that upset

with whistles for Venetius, for Bellingham, for other players,

whistles for Arbeloa, and most interestingly, I guess, quistles and chance for Florentina

of Paris, the president, to resign, which is something that hadn't been seen in a long time

at the Bernabelle. Things calmed down a bit last night. It seemed like a lot of the fans got

what they had to say off their chest. They were mostly behind the team last night. And it also helps that they hammered a pretty poor Monaco side, 6-1 to all but confirm they're going to go through in the Champions League, which was a bit of a relief for Arbeloa, a bit of a relief for Florentino. But there's still lots of issues there. It's still going to be a difficult job far below. There's still issues with the squad. Fans were happy enough with the victory that went last night, but if they lose again, who knows what will happen. And Perez has a lot of things to work out as well in the management of the club. So even for Real Madrid, it's a really interesting time to be following them. Yeah, I mean, Guillermo, much has been made of the booing of certain players, Vinicius Jr.

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