Spanish Football: Is Ronaldo's personal lust for honours hurting Real?

Ronaldo appears obsessed with winning personal honours

Ahead of Saturday's Madrid derby Jonathan Wilson looks at possible reasons why Real are not the force they were last season, with Cristiano Ronaldo's personal desires being one of them...

These are strange times in the Spanish capital. Not since they won the league in 1996 have Atletico Madrid finished above Real Madrid. They haven't even beaten them in a league game since 1999. The rivalry is about as one-sided as top-level rivalries get - and yet Atletico go into Saturday's Madrid derby fully eight points clear of Real.

Since that 1996 title, Atletico have redefined chaos in Spain, always shooting themselves in the foot, always conspiring to convert promise into preposterousness. But this time it's Real who are in disarray, Sunday's defeat to Real Betis - who had themselves been thrashed 5-1 by Sevilla the previous week - intensifying rumours that Jose Mourinho's time at the club is drawing to a close.

It's an extraordinary point to have reached. Last season, as Real won the title, it seemed Mourinho's attrition had done the trick, wearing Pep Guardiola down until he resigned, while the relentless accumulation of points finally broke Barcelona. With Barca appointing a new coach and, it was assumed, having to go through a process of transition, this should have been Real's free season; the year when they could canter to the title while focusing their real energies on the Champions League.

As it is, Real, when they're not putting four and five past teams, look exhausted. They have enough good individuals to hammer anybody but when the breakthrough fails to materialise early, they seem very quickly to run out of ideas and precision. They are not playing with the same tempo or intensity of last season and, without that, the structural flaws in their side are clear. This is a team that plays in patches. It's about a basic defensive structure and individual talents playing off it, not about the sort of team unit that bonds Barcelona.

Essentially there are two sorts of football: proactive and reactive. Barcelona follow the Ajax of Rinus Michels, the Dynamo Kyiv of Valeriy Lobanovskyi and the AC Milan of Arrigo Sacchi in being proactive. They want the ball, they control the ball. At times they may defend by having the ball, but it's all about them having the ball.

Real Madrid are far more reactive. Lobanovskyi spoke of the coalitions between players being more important than the players themselves. Football for him was about creating the shape that facilitated passing and the control of the ball when in possession, and presenting a shape that was hard for the opposition to penetrate when they had the ball. Barca are all about shape, and the ball zipping along metaphorical tunnels between players; at Real it's obvious that the players - and one in particular - are the most important thing.

It may be counterintuitive to blame Cristiano Ronaldo for their shaky start to the season but his endless lust for personal honours; his very evident desire to win the Balon d'Or and/or the Golden Boot seem almost to outweigh winning games, as though Real Madrid has become to him less a club that he serves in the quest for trophies than a vehicle for earning him individual honours.

Because he is an extraordinary player, he is afforded some slack, but his unwillingness to track or press the opposing full-back, Lukasz Piszczek, was a huge contributory factor in Real Madrid's defeat away to Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League, just as his defeat in the individual battle with Phillip Lahm cost Real in the Champions League semi-final against Bayern Munich last season.

Atletico, by contrast, although they rely for goals almost as much on Falcao as Real do on Ronaldo, are far more of a unit. The Atletico coach Diego Simeone has been influenced by Marcelo Bielsa - not as much as the likes of the new Chile coach Jorge Sampaoli or Gerardo Martino at Newell's - but enough that his midfield snaps with intent, presses and circulates the ball quickly.

All of the five points Atletico have dropped have come away from home, and Real have dropped only two at the Bernabeu, but Real are surely too short and worth laying at 1.491/2, a price that seems based on past history rather than recent form. Given Real have let in only three at home and Atletico's six away games have yielded a total of just 13 goals, Under 2.5 Goals at 2.8415/8 seems extremely tempting. The possibility of a Real rout is there, of course, but this looks the most interesting derby for years.