A fallen hero, a fistfight and a botched clasico: Inside Real Madrid's historically awful week

Real Madrid didn't win a single trophy last year, but it entered the 2025-26 season with high hopes. It hired one of the world's best young coaches, former Madrid player Xabi Alonso, to guide it out of the mire. It assembled a true Galactico-style lineup of superstars, from World Cup winners like France's Kylian Mbappé to hyped young talents like Turkiye's Arda Guler. It had the intelligence, the talent and the finances to elbow its way back into Europe's best.

With just three games remaining in the 2025-26 season, though, those hopes have been well and truly dashed. Alonso was unceremoniously fired after a string of poor (but understandable) results; his replacement, fellow ex-player Alvaro Arbeloa, has been an unmitigated disaster. Reports keep emerging of Madrid's players being unwilling to work with coaches and only interested in themselves. The team fell far behind its rival Barcelona in the Spanish league and got ousted from the Champions League in the quarterfinals, setting itself up for a second straight year with zero trophies.

The club entered the week of May 4, then, in a cloud of discontent. That cloud quickly proved to be a storm as humiliation after humiliation befell Madrid in quick succession.

A missing superstar

Mbappé has been MIA for Madrid since injuring his hamstring against Real Betis in April. On its face, that's no crisis; injuries are frustrating but common, and no one wants Mbappé to put himself in danger of missing the World Cup this summer. No one in Madrid would begrudge him the rest if he were resting out of the limelight.

He isn't. Mbappé has spent the majority of his recovery time on a very public vacation in Italy, and that's rubbed many in the Madrid orbit the wrong way. A group of Madrid fans launched a petition to oust Mbappé from the club for his carelessness...and that petition amassed over a million signatures.

A training ground bust-up

With Madrid's de facto leader out on vacation, things fell apart between the rest of the players.

Reports emerged of distrust between the Madrid players and coach Arbeloa. Those reports were clearly leaked from someone within the dressing room, and they led to a wild internal witch hunt. Things culminated in a near-unbelievable fight between midfielders Fede Valverde and Aurelien Tchouameni. Valverde was certain that Tchouameni was the mole; Tchouameni was adamant that he had nothing to do with it. The two fought until Tchouameni punched Valverde so hard that he fell over, cracked his head on a piece of dressing room furniture and left the training ground in a wheelchair, complaining of temporary amnesia.