Can Rayo Plot An End To Real's Run?

They say the worst thing you can do is take the lead against Real Madrid, but Rayo Vallecano, with their €7m budget, are looking to best the big boys this weekend...


Real Madrid's opening halves in the Santiago Bernabeu have been sluggish to say the least this season. Sides such as Athletic Bilbao, Atlético Madrid, Málaga, Zaragoza and most recently of all, Levante, have all been given one goal leads before being pegged back and subsequently beaten. "Perhaps we were sleeping a bit," admitted Cristiano Ronaldo, after Madrid's eventual 4-1 win over Levante a fortnight ago.
The most dramatic of these lapses of concentration came at the end of September, when Rayo Vallecano took the lead against Madrid after just 15 seconds, the fastest ever goal in the Bernabeu by an opposition side. The match ended with a 6-2 victory for Madrid but it was the most flattering of scorelines in an encounter when the home side were more than a little rattled.
Seated in his small office in Rayo Vallecano's training centre, a bustling hive of activity where a table and chairs for his scouting and coaching team and a white board leave little room for anything else, the Madrid club's boss, Jose Ramón Sandoval, will this week be busy planning to launch yet more surprises on the league leaders during Sunday afternoon's clash in Madrid's working class barrio of Vallecas.
Primera pundits often chuckle that the worst thing that a team can do is score first against Madrid, with the notion that it fires the big boys up and makes them move into a higher gear. Better to keep it to a draw and pounce later on, is the counter-theory. It's a notion that's stuff and nonsense to Sandoval who reflected on Rayo's autumn clash in Real Madrid's home.
"I always go out to win from the first minute," said the Madridileño to Football365. "The problem we had in the Santiago Bernabeu was it was a series of bad moments. The first goal game when the ball was given away and Ronaldo scored. Mistakes like that cannot be allowed. All eleven players need perfect performances for 90 minutes. If you make one mistake, you're finished. We made one mistake and that was it."
This supremely confident approach to football has served Sandoval well over the past season-and-a-half. The coach whose background is in amateur football took over Rayo having lead the club's 'B' team. The apparent mission impossible was to take the club up to the Primera, lest it disappear into oblivion due to awful economic conditions that saw himself and his footballers unpaid throughout the crucial campaign.
"It was a very, very difficult year for everyone," recalled former Rayo defender Antonio Amaya soon after winning promotion last summer. "It would have been easy to throw in the towel as there were players who couldn't even afford to put petrol in their cars or their cars were taken back because they couldn't make the payments."
By studying motivational techniques, spending time with his players to work out their problems and through sheer bloodymindedness, Sandoval lead Rayo into a second place finish and a return to la Primera after a nine-year absence. But after yet more institutional chaos over the summer which saw players still chasing their missing money and being asked to take massive pay cuts to future salaries, the worrying thought was that Rayo's top-flight campaign was going to be a disastrous one, a season of sorrow spent rooted to the bottom of the table, a club with a budget of €7m trying to battle the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona.
But after 23 rounds of football, Rayo Vallecano are in eighth place, two points from the Champions League places and 11 from probable safety. What's more, the team are on the back of a three match winning streak, giving the side confidence to really have a go at Real Madrid on Sunday, free of the philosophy of many rivals this season who claim that "we have another league to think about," before waving the white flag against José Mourinho's men.
Although Rayo's ground only has three sides, the stadium is a tight one with the stands right up close to a pitch that is bobbly, bumpy and small. "The Bernabeu is nice, it's elegant but if you want real football then it's in Vallecas with the fans supporting you," said Amaya. Fantastic home support and a gung-ho, positive approach away from the home has born fruit in a year where Rayo have gone above and beyond people's expectations. The side's star player this season has been Michu - nominally a midfielder, but a big bustling forward who plays behind a main striker and has also popped up with 11 goals, just one behind Roberto Soldado and the same total as Athletic Bilbao's Fernando Llorente.
That forward in front of Michu is now Diego Costa, a striker who joined in January on loan from Atlético Madrid, after the previous months of the season out with injury but who has scored four goals in his three games for Rayo since coming to Vallecas. Both are extremely strong in the air, an issue that has been a tactical weakness for Real Madrid this season.
Using his smart-phone and by scribbling on your correspondent's notepad, Sandoval demonstrated how his team shut out Barcelona almost the whole of the first half before an eventual defeat in the Camp Nou in November. The philosophy of that match was that anyone can be beaten on their day. Rayo will be looking to put that to the test once again on Sunday afternoon in Vallecas.