Spanish journalist Xavier Bosch believes, in his article in the Spanish newspaper Mundo Deportivo, that Real Madrid have everything they need to chase the La Liga title and the Champions League, and to get the better of anyone put in front of them, even a sparkling Barcelona. His verdict is that they are squandering the lot through excessive tension and a preoccupation with what he calls an imaginary campaign against refereeing, rather than focusing on the football.
Bosch added in his article:
"There is Thibaut Courtois, Fede Valverde, Konate, Antonio Rudiger, Marc Cucurella, Aurelien Tchouameni, Bernardo Silva, Jude Bellingham, Arda Guler, Kylian Mbappe and Vinicius Junior".
Real Madrid have a team and a squad capable of winning La Liga and the Champions League and of overcoming any opponent, even a magnificent Barcelona. But their players need to play football and abandon everything that is toxic.
For now, though, with Jose Mourinho on the bench and two years without a trophy behind them, the team believe that cranking the tension up to the maximum and obsessing over a refereeing persecution that does not exist will be the turning point towards winning titles.
The result has been exactly the opposite. Every match brings fresh scenes of a small, tense side full of resentment, mixing childish tantrums with the behaviour of troublemakers out to settle scores.
Vinicius Junior alone used to be the focal point of this conduct. Not any more. From the minute's silence onwards, Mourinho and his coaching staff protest about everything.
Every throw-in becomes an occasion for exaggerated protest, and with every foul they demand a card, surrounding the referee and trying to intimidate him. Even Chendo, the team's official, loses his temper.
Nothing has had the slightest effect: not the relentless campaign over the Negreira case, not the unseemly incitement on Real Madrid's television channel, not the lengthy statements issued by club president Florentino Perez, one of which ran to eight pages against the Referees' Technical Committee.
If anything, this behaviour has made them lose their heads. Instead of playing football and showing the level they can reach, they drown in protests, tantrums and squabbles.
Jude Bellingham and Marc Cucurella never stop complaining throughout the match, either shooting hostile looks at the opposition or threatening the referee. Konate and Antonio Rudiger turn every corner in their team's favour into a wrestling display, then feign innocence when they are reprimanded.
They raise the level of tension constantly, before, during and after matches, and it serves their team's interests not one bit. They would do better to carry on down this path, sunk in the whirlwind of absurd justifications they create for themselves.