Ancelotti's successor, Rafa Benitez, has been sacked with official announcement expected later.

update: Zinedine Zidane will step us as Madrid interim coach with Santi Solari as his No.2.

A press conference has been announced for 17:30 CET

source

Well Zidane apparently was the one who delivered the news .

Shpalman, what irritates everyone about the pic is that you dont just straight out say what it means: Benitez is fat, here he eats food like he hasnt had food before, instead you are trying to say it means other stuff like "cultural differences". WTF? Just be honest lol, hes fat, end off.

Also, him being fat has nothing to do with the sack, so people naturally dont see the point in why you posted the pic.

As for the sacking, completely expected. Will be very exciting to see what Zidane can do as coach given the incredible understanding of the game he showed as a player.

@shpalman You should also understand that footballs public faces are idolized by some people and when you post a picture which is not one of their finest time in the public you might cause anger to their fanbase. Benitez won the UCL trophy with Liverpool, he has clearly earned the respect and the heart of some Liverpool fans with that achievement. I think you miss Gustavo's point. He is sick of the way Benitez was getting boo'd by his own team fans and when he clicks on a thread on a respected site like Footyroom he was expecting to see a normal picture not one of his worse pictures. I find it myself a bit disrespectful towards his face but I don't mind some ''banter'' if it is well-intented and I am quite sure you were NOT aiming to offend anyone. So why not simply change it and prevent all this?

Back on topic the video made me giggle a bit :P. Here is some more of those meme's or whatever they are called

@Marcus2011 @JozeMourinho Lads, you should be ashamed this is terribl... terribly funny, :D thanks for the link guys. I know I should not be laughing but those vid just put a smile to my face no matter how much I try to stay serious.

@Lily

what irritates everyone about the pic is that you dont just straight out say what it means

everyone? to me it looks like that there's only Gustavo making a big deal out of that pic. also, here, have a read.

exactly like you say, he's eating food like there's no tomorrow, as you all remember the 1st news after his appointment were about Perez putting him on a forced diet. weird way to start at RM, don't you think? as i said, high context, low context, it looks like you need a drawing otherwise you won't be able to get a joke or a funny reference. anyway i am getting quite tired of this, it's over dramatic, really. i posted a funny pic, it's not disrespectful, it's not against the rules, but you know what? i'm going to remove it and just use the same standards for when it comes to other posts ; )

edit: also notice how you dedicated 4 lines to the pic, 2 lines to the actual topic. Gustavo didn't even touch the topic, at all.
some of you just like to suck the life out of some people, but that's fine, i'll keep an eye on you both.

Zidane

This is what I believe about the situation with Zidane and is what I said in a different thread about this certain topic.

"I think that although he is legend as a player but he does't have the right kind of experience to manage arguably the biggest club in the world. I know he has coached the B team for awhile but that is nothing compared to the first team. Just because you are an amazing player that doesn't mean you will be a good manager. Look at Maradona and what he did with Argentina in 2010. He took clear favourites to win the tournament and allowed them to crash out in a disastrous way (I know it was Germany but still). To show comparison I, as a Man U fan think appointing Giggs as the next manager would be a very bad decision because as I said before good players don't always mean good managers. Overall I think Zidane would be a very bad choice...."

This is just my opinion and I have nothing against Zidane but I believe this will simply not work out well for the club and its future. The only positive I see in this is that like tiki taka said, the players will actually respect this guy unlike Benitez.

Benitez

I believe that sacking him is the wrong thing to do. Managers always need time to adjust and Benitez was barely given half a season. The fact players like James, Isco, and Ronaldo fell out with him is not his fault. Ronaldo was simply disappointed that Ancelotti was sacked and took it out on Benitez which I believe was the absolute worse thing to do because it was not Benitez's fault that he was sacked (it was the president Perez) so there is no justification for getting mad at Benitez. Isco and James fell out with him as a result of a lack of playing time which could not be prevented because Real simply have such an unneeded large squad and Benitez was trying his best to let everyone play. As for all the poor results that Benitez had it was the players fault most of the time. The players were often playing like crap in big important games and there was nothing he could do about it. Why were they playing bad? I think similar to the Chelsea situation some players felt that because they no longer like their manager, they thought the right response was to play poorly. Another surprising thing about the sacking was how well you could say Real had been doing in most of their competitions. They are only three points off the top, were dominating the champions league and yes they were disqualified from the cup but as said before my many others it was not Benitez's fault. Along with all this, Benitez did love this club dearly as he was crying when he was appointed. If he loved it so much do you really think he wouldn't be putting in a huge amount of effort to have success. Someone who loves the club that much should be given a longer opportunity then what was given. Another problem with this situation is what will happen to Gareth Bale. I was finally seeing the old Bale with Benitez in charge but I fear he will start to struggle now that Benitez is gone. A major problem with all this is Perez. He has to understand that managers go through ups and downs in their job and you to give them to figure things out before sacking them because with so many good players at Real things will most likely turn out positive. Remember when Enrique was struggling and was on the brink of being sacked and players like Messi were RUMOURED to have had a fight with the manger. Well look at what happened Barcelona, they have turned out to be incredible under Enrique and time was simply the answer. Perez has to also have seen that sacking Ancelotti was a horrible thing to do and should have clearly never have been done as there was nothing he could do about their unsuccessful season. There was nothing he could do about getting outclassed by Barcelona in the league and it wasn't his fault that Athletico Madrid and Juventus beat them in the cup and champions league because their players played poorly and caused them to lose, not him. He also was starting to build a young team with lots of potential after signing young players like James and Kroos who were still settling into the Ancelotti way and life in Madrid in their first season. I think had he not been sacked he would have had a summer to buy players to fill a couple wholes and with James and Kroos fully settled they would have been deadly. Also, Ronaldo did really like him and seemed to play amazing under him. My point to all of this is that Real's situation at the moment is rather confusing and very unstable. I have nothing against Real and hope they start to turn things around.

@JozeMourinho I absolutely love the internet react videos and I must say that this particular one was VERY funny.

About the whole argument with the photo I have to say it is probably the dumbest argument I have ever seen on this website. It does not matter at all and everyone has to understand that shpalman and some other people find it funny and there is nothing wrong with that. It is in the end just a picture of him eating food like a normal person. Personally I think there is nothing wrong if a manager has a snack during a game. Fans eat all the time during matches because they feel a little bit hungry so why can't he do that to. It is not like him eating will negatively effect the game in any kind of way

I'm sorry for the VERY long read but I just wanted to express my thoughts on this whole situation.

Thank you for taking your time.

Gustavo didn't even touch the topic, at all.

I did. It was on the other thread about Benitez being sacked that you closed. I'd love to point out other places in this thread where you're flat out wrong shpalman but I don't want to deviate the topic any further so I won't, and thanks for removing the pic. I apologize to everyone else.

Will be supporting him because I respect him as the greatest player ever but very hard to see him going too far. As many have mentioned, being a player has nothing to do with managing a club.

Though if you look at Real Madrid's players, I don't think anyone can do CATASTROPHIC results there. I think even I could manage them 2nd in the league & UCL semi finals. Winning the UCL & La Liga is completely different thing and it's the difference between me & great managers.

Come on, that was not offensive. People get offended for no reason lately and actually Shpalman is giving his own time to clean the website and keep it friendly, not the opposite.

@DecentK Knowing how Zidane was demanding toward his teammates in l' Equipe de France, i think it could work using what he learned with Carlo back to the basis with a midlefield control with Kroos, Modric and a third defensive mid. 4-3-3 bench Danilo and bring back Carvajal to his deserving starting place.
I hope for him that he will do good but not that good :) my love for Zidane isnt enough to see him lift the league instead of Barça, i' d rather see El cholo lift it.

@tiki fair point, time will tell

So guess who's the new manager of Newcastle?

RaFACT Benitez.

My prediction is Newcastle will climb out of the relegation zone . Benitez is still good manager despite his recent fcks ups .

Sunderland is obviously taking Newcastles spot no matter who manages them^

Will be interesting to see what Benitez will do with Newcastle, I would like to think the team have enough qualitiy to escape relegation so I believe it will be up to him to make the difference. Time will tell if he have enough time and skill to change the situation.