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| Real Madrid's former coach Jose Antonio Camacho
arrives to the Bernabeu stadium shortly before giving a
statement to announce his resignation September 20,
2004. (Reuters) |
Jose Antonio Camacho resigned as Real Madrid
coach on Monday four months after taking up the post saying that
he felt incapable of getting the most out of the
club's expensively assembled squad.
"I believe that the team has not lived up to expectations and that as
long as I remain as coach it will not improve and that's why I've decided
to step down," Camacho told a news conference at the Bernabeu. "I've got
my own way of behaving and of coaching. I did not see it reflected on the
pitch and I could not see the situation improving.
Club president Florentino Perez said that Camacho's former assistant
Mariano Garcia Remon would take charge of the first team.
Garcia Remon, an ex-Real Madrid goalkeeper who won six league titles
during his 14 seasons at the club between 1971 and 1985, is a former boss
of Sporting Gijon and Numancia. He will be Real's fourth coach since June
2003.
Garcia Remon stressed that he had accepted the job only after Camacho
had urged him to do so. "It may seem odd, but for me today is a very sad
day," he said. "It is a day that sees that the end of the work of someone
who has done a very good job that just wasn't reflected on the pitch.
 Garcia Remon is very much in the mould of Vicente del Bosque, the man who led
Real to two European Cups and two league titles in four seasons before
being discarded at the end of the 2002-2003 season.
Camacho was appointed as coach in place of Carlos Queiroz after the
failure of Real - with players like Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane and David
Beckham - to win a trophy last season.
Real ended last season with a worst-ever five-match losing streak. This
season they successfully got through the qualifying round of the Champions
League, then scraped two disappointing 1-0 wins in their first two Primera
Liga games.
They suffered a stinging
3-0 defeat at Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League on Wednesday and
then turned in an appalling
performance to lose 1-0 at Espanyol on Saturday.
Camacho offered his resignation to Perez following the defeat
at Espanyol, saying he felt incapable of carrying on because he did not enjoy the support
of the players, a number of whom are reported to have resented
his disciplinarian approach.
(Agencies) | 
Updated: 2004-09-21 15:17