Schuster's Tactical Lie Backfires

As if the Real Madrid directors aren't renowned for being difficult enough, Bernd Schuster appears to have made his job to win them over even tougher this week with an unnecessary team selection lie.

The manager said in a press conference before the Zenit St Petersburg game that he would play the same side that started against Real Betis at the weekend, which would mean Raúl would be in the team. However, as it turned out this was simply a ploy to try and fool any scouts the opponents might have had at the press conference and the Spanish striker didn't start the game.

Whilst he may have thought it was a pretty innocuos plan to get one over on Zenit it appears that it has in fact turned out larger than he expected, but not in a good way.

In a dangerous boardroom it is believed that the decision did not go down particularly well, especially considering it caused a debate as to whether Raúl should or not be starting. It also gave a poor image of the club with the manager lying to over 100 members of the press assembled for his conference.

The board of directors are believe to be confused by the decision of the German, and were left in the dark even more so because no-one knew about the final XI on the day as they thought, through word of mouth, that it had already been confirmed.

When asked about it in Russia the president of the club Ramon Calderón said that he did not know any reason why Schuster would lie to the press and as an extension, to the fans.

James Walker-Roberts