Real Madrid for a revamp

Marca’s report yesterday came in the wake of Real’s crushing 5-1 defeat at Celta Vigo, which buried the fifth-placed team’s last championship hopes. As holders, Real also crashed out of the European champions league to Dynamo Kiev in the quarterfinals.

Sanz earlier this year fired hapless Dutch coach Gus Hiddink, who never managed to form a formidable bunch of individual players — like Clarence Seedorf, Davor Suker, Pregrag Mijatovic, Christian Karembeu and Raul Gonzalez — into a high-powered team.

Now, according to Marca: “The entire squad is forsale. That applies for the to stars as well as reserves.” Toshack confirmed this by saying “not even our star striker Raul” will be spared. The Croatian 1998 World Cup top scorer Suker has been linked with Panatinaikos Athens, Seedorf with Barcelona and Christian Panucci is set to return to his native Italy.

Toshack took drastic action after the rout in Vigo which marked Real’s worst league defeat since a 5-1 drubbing against Barcelona 1994. “No more talk now, we will take action,” vowed Toshack, who scrapped the players’s day off and imposed a tough training sessions.

Ranked fifth, Real can still hope to qualify for the Champions League, for which even fourth place is good enough. A Uefa Cup berth, for which sixth place is sufficient, is not as lucrative, and even further away from the original season goals.

These goals were back-to-back Champions and domestic league titles. To put it in a different way, finishing ahead of arch-rivals Barcelona. Jupp Heynckes was sacked as coach last year becauseBarcelona won the league.