KARACHI: A few matches into recently-sacked Julen Lopetegui’s tenure as Real Madrid coach, and with the team winning, all talk was of how the club was undergoing a change in its playing style.

Following his hiring in June, Real were playing possession football and it seemed the players were adapting. But it then unravelled. And unravelled pretty quickly.

For a side that enjoyed unprecedented success in the UEFA Champions League under his predecessor Zinedine Zidane — winning three titles in a row — with a squad that could produce blistering counterattacks; with a team that played to the players’ strengths, it was a change that didn’t go down to well.

More crucially, the fun factor wasn’t there. Gone were the confident, smiling faces. It had become a squad bereft of ideas. The players looked shattered and tired.

A 5-1 hammering to arch-rivals Barcelona, a team that has inspired many with its style of play, in the ‘Clasico’ on Sunday proved to be Lopetegui’s final match in charge.

Former player Santiago Solari was put in interim charge to put the side back on track, to help the side to return to its winning philosophy.

That philosophy is to have fun while playing football, according to Guillermo Hamdan Zaragoza, the technical coach for the Real Madrid Foundation’s Clinics whose job is to “spread the Real Madrid way of football across the world”.

“The most important part of our philosophy is to enjoy playing football, to have fun, to enjoy with your team-mates and to retransmit the values that we have,” Zaragoza said when asked about it following his presentation at a news conference here on Thursday to announce the Foundation’s three-day camp in collaboration with Japanese zipper manufacturer YKK.

The first day of the camp on Friday will see Zaragoza and two other coaches train 30 local coaches with 300 under-privileged children from four NGO’s to be trained on the final two days.

“In training, the players have to give a 100 per cent, you have to be focused, you have to respect the coaches, respect your team-mates,” added Zaragoza. “You have to be committed to the team so if a player doesn’t have these [qualities], it is impossible [to be part of Real Madrid]. That’s the first thing we look for in players.”

Unlike Barca, Real’s transfer market strategy — especially under president Florentino Perez — has never been linked to how a player would fit into the club’s playing style.

Real are governed by the ‘Zidanes y Pavones’ strategy, named after legendary midfielder Zidane and former Real defender Francisco Pavon, that is aimed at combining expensive signings and homegrown players.

Big-money signings have been few in the last few seasons with more focus on the youth. Real can’t still be identified by a unique playing style. Zaragoza doesn’t say much either. “We like to have the ball, we like to be attacking and we like to take the initiative.”

The Real Madrid Foundation’s arrival in Pakistan is part of the 12th edition of YKK’s CSR initiative and it isn’t the first time they have come here. Back in 2012, they signed a MoU with an NGO to set up football academies in Pakistan. It was a plan that never reached fruition.

Zaragoza said there was no chance of them opening an academy here for now but they would like to conduct clinics frequently. It was something YKK Pakistan general manager Naveed Asghar Sheikh too was hoping for.

“YKK’s collaboration with the Real Madrid Foundation has been on since 2007 but this is the first time they have come to Pakistan,” he said. “I hope they come back to the country and conduct another session in Lahore. That could be their small contribution to the game of football in Pakistan.”

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2018