The nickname with which Spanish Real Madrid players refer to Arbeloa

Real Madrid is experiencing an unprecedented sporting crisis, as to the poor results on the field of play has been added extreme tension in the locker room, with an exchange of reproaches and footballers who have come to blows. Fights in some training sessions may be within the norm, but what is not normal is that the discussions not only drag on over time, but also end up as the matter between Tchouaméni and Valverde did, with the Uruguayan – second captain of the white team – having to go to the hospital and the club announcing that he will be out for about two weeks due to a traumatic brain injury. All this, just a handful of days before visiting Camp Nou and seeing how Barça with a draw has enough to seal the League under the noses of the whites.

The Real Madrid locker room is currently a real powder keg. Manolo Lama, a journalist for the COPE channel and narrator of the white team's matches on the same station, has added more fuel to the fire by explaining one of the locker room secrets that help understand the existing tension. In this case, Álvaro Arbeloa and the Spanish-nationality players. According to Lama, these players, usually substitutes, make fun of their coach from the bench: "Many of the problems come because the Spaniards who don't play, when they are on the bench, don't stop calling their coach 'con'."

The journalist added that the footballers openly criticize the coach with phrases like: “Look at the cone, how bad he is” or “look at the cone, he doesn't understand anything”. Even though Arbeloa had not realized it directly, the information has reached him through his coaching staff or the kit managers, a further sign of the absolute lack of control that the Real Madrid locker room is currently experiencing. The nickname 'cone' –referring to a technically limited footballer– became popular during Arbeloa's time as a player, especially on social media and among rival fans. Even Gerard Piqué, when both were still active footballers, made reference to it with a pun in which he referred to Arbeloa as "cono-cido" (a play on words combining 'cone' and 'known').

Florentino Pérez, responsible

Lama also directly points to Florentino Pérez as the origin of the mess and to the clan formed by Vinícius Júnior, Valverde, and Jude Bellingham, who opposed Xavi Alonso's discipline. The situation exploded when Vinícius defied Alonso in front of 80,000 people at the Santiago Bernabéu at the moment he was substituted on the day of the classic and the president supported the player, causing the coach's dismissal. From here, the white crisis has been escalating to levels where reality seems to surpass fiction.