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Camacho quits as Real Madrid coach
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-21 10:30
Jose Antonio Camacho resigned as Real Madrid coach on Monday four months
after taking up the post saying that he felt incapable of getting the most out
of the club's expensively assembled squad.
"I believe that the team has not lived up to expectations and that as
long as I remain as coach it will not improve and that's why I've decided to
step down," Camacho told a news conference at the Bernabeu.
"I've got my own way of behaving and of coaching. I did not see it
reflected on the pitch and I could not see the situation improving.
"The president asked me if I thought I could turn things around in the
short term and I told him that I did not, so we reached an agreement that in
order to prevent the club entering into an even bigger crisis I would give up
the post."
Club president Florentino Perez said that Camacho's former assistant
Mariano Garcia Remon would take charge of the first team.
"Garcia Remon will be here the whole season and we hope for many more,"
Perez told Radio Marca. "It is not a temporary measure, because he fits
perfectly into the culture of this club.
"With his appointment we have found a rapid solution to a situation
that should not affect the aims of Real Madrid, because the institution is
always the most important thing."
Garcia Remon, an ex-Real Madrid goalkeeper who won six league titles
during his 14 seasons at the club between 1971 and 1985, is a former boss of
Sporting Gijon and Numancia. He will be Real's fourth coach since June 2003.
Garcia Remon stressed that he had accepted the job only after Camacho
had urged him to do so.
"It may seem odd, but for me today is a very sad day," he said. "It is
a day that sees that the end of the work of someone who has done a very good job
that just wasn't reflected on the pitch.
"It wasn't the way I dreamed of being here to train Real Madrid."
LOW PROFILE
Garcia Remon is very much in the mould of Vicente del Bosque, the man
who led Real to two European Cups and two league titles in four seasons before
being discarded at the end of the 2002-2003 season.
Camacho was appointed as coach in place of Carlos Queiroz after the
failure of Real - with players like Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane and David Beckham -
to win a trophy last season.
It is the second time he has made a premature exit from the club he
served so loyally as a player.
He managed only 23 days in the post in 1998, quitting before the season
had even started after a row with then president Lorenzo Sanz about a contract
for fitness trainer Carlos Lorenzana.
Real ended last season with a worst-ever five-match losing streak. This
season they successfully got through the qualifying round of the Champions
League, then scraped two disappointing 1-0 wins in their first two Primera Liga
games.
They suffered a stinging 3-0 defeat at Bayer Leverkusen in the
Champions League on Wednesday and then turned in an appalling performance to
lose 1-0 at Espanyol on Saturday.
Camacho offered his resignation to Perez following the defeat at
Espanyol, saying he felt incapable of carrying on because he did not enjoy the
support of the players, a number of whom are reported to have resented his
disciplinarian approach.
"I can't take anymore," was Spanish sports daily Marca's reported
version of the conversation that took place between Camacho and Perez.
"I can see that there is no rapport with the squad. I had great hopes
about this job but they haven't been realised."
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