Valdano apologises for "Real" failures © EuroFootball.com

"The director of sports of the most prestigious football club in Spain, Real Madrid, Jorge Valdano, stated that all he can do now is apologize to all Real fans for the fourth consecutive failure in the Spanish championship.

This was the first time in the 102-year history of Real when the club lost four times in a row. Yesterday, the royal club lost 2-1 away to the long-excluded from the league team "Murcia". As the main rival of the Madrid club, Barcelona, defeated Racing Santander 1-0 last round, Real had to give up the second place on the table to the Catalan club.

"It's difficult to justify what happened to the club in the last two months," Valdano told the Real website. "All we can do is apologize to all Real fans and assure them that we will do everything to prevent this from happening again.

The players are psychologically broken. They try their best, but yesterday we had to fight with ten men (Beckham received a red card in the 36th minute - ed. note), and this greatly crushes the players' enthusiasm."

If Real fails to secure second place in the last round, they would have to change their plans - occupying third place, Real would have to play in the Champions League qualifying round next year and this would prevent them from going on a tour to Asia as planned so far.

"We can play matches in Europe that would bring as much profit as matches in Asia," Valdano said. "However, we would like to play there because there are a lot of Real fans in Asia who hope to see us at least once a year."