The long season lasted ten months, and countless challenges and crises had to be endured along the way.
Any team was bound to encounter all kinds of problems during a long ten-month campaign.
It could be fluctuations in a player's form, injuries troubling key players, certain players throwing a fit, or perhaps a player losing focus after being poached by an outside club.
It was precisely because there were so many problems for a Head Coach to solve that people said being a Head Coach was an extremely comprehensive profession. It required not only professional football ability, but also management and communication skills, and even mastery of negotiation and psychology.
In short, football had always been an incredibly complex sport.
Real Madrid had run into a few problems recently. None of them was a major issue, but they were troublesome enough.
One was that Marcelo had been injured. He had picked up the injury in the match against Atletico Madrid. At first, they had thought it was nothing serious, but his condition had not improved. After a detailed examination, he was expected to be out for a while.
But this was not a major problem either, because Azpilicueta could handle the position, even though he was stronger defensively than offensively.
The other issue was contract renewal.
Young Jesé had shone brilliantly this season and was now even showing signs of becoming a rotation player. That had made Hazard work even harder; otherwise, he really might not have been able to hold off the youngster.
There was no problem with Jesé's potential or talent. On top of that, he had followed Yang Yang in extra technical and physical training over the past two or three years, greatly improving his physique and laying a very solid foundation. Combined with his excellent recent