5 reasons why Julen Lopetegui was destined to suffer as Real Madrid coach

#3 The players had started to show signs of decline

Real Madrid players have won everything there is to win

Real Madrid are three times defending Champions League winners, so how could they have achieved this with a team of players on the decline right?

Well, without taking anything from the brilliance of their three consecutive Champions League triumphs, the truth is that Zinedine Zidane deserves maximum praise for inspiring the team to overachieve despite its limitations.

It is a well-known maxim that knockout competitions are not the best way to just the best teams, as clubs could make a speciality of stepping to the occasion on the one night where they know they must either win or get eliminated, and this is what Real Madrid under Zinedine Zidane became renowned for.

Rather, it is league campaigns where the winner is decided after a nine-month marathon, and the consistency required to emerge victorious after 38 matches that can be more effectively used to gauge the best team, as very rarely can a team win a league title on a fluke (Leicester required massive consistency to win the 2016 EPL title).

A team can win the Champions League, World Cup and any other knockout tournament and be described as lucky, as either a fortuitous goal or curious referee decision could have aided them mightily.

It is hard if not downright impossible to see league champions described as lucky, as the team would have had to be the most fortunate team in history to triumph after 38 games in nine months on luck.

Real Madrid's current team has at its core; a group of world-class players who have been together for the last six years, partaking together in all of the club's triumphs in this period, including the last three Champions Leagues, and four in the last five years.

Real Madrid are three times defending champions, but they never really gave off the vibe of being the outright best club in the world, as they had a lot of circumstances in their favour.

Despite their triumphs on the continent, Real's league form gave them away as overachievers in Europe, as the club had Ronaldo to bail them out on the big nights in the Champions League.

They finished the last campaign a massive 17 points behind Barcelona, as the players failed to show the requisite performance levels and consistency to last the distance in the league. Results last term were so shambolic that it only took a triumph in the Champions League to end the season on a mild success.

The law of diminishing returns is well known, and this also applies to football, as a player has about five to seven years of peak performance, before starting to take a decline.

The current Real Madrid squad has achieved all there is to win in football, hence there is nowhere else to go but down, despite the FIFPro XI (which is more a popularity contest) suggesting otherwise.

Zinedine Zidane saw all this, and decided to take a walk, as the Champions League triumphs and Ronaldo's presence papered over the cracks in the team. With the Portuguese gone however, there is no more respite for a squad of unmotivated players, which is similar to what happened to the first Real Galactico squad, the Spain golden generation and the current Germany team.