MADRID // If Carlo Ancelotti was anxious during Real Madrid’s early-season wobbles, the Italian coach did not show it.
The European champions were defeated in consecutive weeks at the beginning of the season, losing 4-2 at Real Sociedad and 2-1 at home to reigning champions Atletico Madrid, who had also beaten them in the Spanish Super Cup.
Madrid came under fire, with goalkeeper and captain Iker Casillas describing events as “horrible”. To compound matters, Barcelona were winning every game under new manager Luis Enrique and enjoyed an early six-point lead.
Critics brayed at Madrid’s misfortune, with claims of a crisis at the Bernabeu. Such allegations were partly valid, after club president Florentino Perez was criticised by his own fans for selling Angel Di Maria to Manchester United and Xabi Alonso to Bayern Munich.
Opinion formers said Di Maria had been sold because he did not sell enough shirts. Style, they said, was triumphing over substance and Madrid had lost the panache to win matches.
Perez said little; Ancelotti said he could not understand why anyone was anxious.
They had won the Uefa Champions League less than 100 days earlier and would let results do the talking, but the Italian’s position was uncertain at a club that has used 25 managers in the last 25 years.
Reliable sources indicated that Perez might want to make a change, but he stuck by his coach and the decision appears vindicated.
Starting with an 8-2 victory at Deportivo La Coruna on September 20, Madrid began a winning run that, 19 games later, has not stopped.
Ancelotti’s side have leapfrogged Barcelona at the top and won all six Champions League games, including a demolition of Liverpool at Anfield. They bested Barca 3-1, the first time Madrid beat the Catalans by two clear goals since 2008.
Cristiano Ronaldo has scored a staggering 30 goals in 22 games, with 23 coming in only 13 league games. In their relentless progress, Madrid have hit rivals for four goals or more on 11 occasions.
Ronaldo is on target to win another Pichichi award as the top goalscorer and to be named World Player of the Year for 2014. His strike foil, Karim Benzema, has scored 13 and won over any remaining critics, while Gareth Bale has eight goals.
Madrid are the best team in the world at the moment. Ancelotti lost those early games, but he had to assimilate new signings James Rodriguez and Toni Kroos. Casillas, the captain, was not finished, as suggested after a poor World Cup, and remains No 1, with Costa Rica's Keylor Navas the No 2 keeper.
It did not take Ancelotti long to get Madrid’s machine working back on full power. Their football is slick, entertaining and dominating. They have top players in every position.
Manchester United, who once sniffed at Madrid’s idea of paying top money for fully formed star players, are now trying to emulate Madrid’s position by having elite players in every role.
Madrid hope to finish a wonderful year best remembered for winning the much-anticipated decima by becoming world champions in Morocco on December 20. As Barcelona end 2014 without a trophy, Madrid have already won the Copa del Rey, European Super Cup and a 10th European Cup, which earned them a semi-final spot in the Fifa Club World Cup in Rabat on Tuesday, against the winners of the match between Mexican side Cruz Azul and Western Sydney Wanderers.
That pair meet in Rabat on Saturday, representing a remarkable rise for an Australian side who were founded two-and-a-half years ago. They beat Al Hilal of Saudi Arabia in the Asian Champions League (ACL) final, becoming the first Australian side to win the trophy.
They did it the hard way, defeating defending J-League champions Sanfrecce Hiroshima, defending Asian champions Guangzhou Evergrande and last season’s ACL runners-up, FC Seoul, on the way to the final. If the Wanderers beat the Mexicans, then Madrid await.
Argentina’s San Lorenzo are the favourites from the other side of the draw, while Madrid are the obvious top pick overall in a competition won by European clubs in seven of the last eight seasons.
Madrid also expect to be well-supported by their fans, because Rabat, like Lisbon, the venue of the Champions League final, is about an hour’s flight from the Spanish capital.
Fortune has favoured this brilliant Madrid team more than once this year, but they are making their own luck.
sports@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter at @SprtNationalUAE
Scotland's team:
15-Sean Maitland, 14-Darcy Graham, 13-Nick Grigg, 12-Sam Johnson, 11-Byron McGuigan, 10-Finn Russell, 9-Ali Price, 8-Magnus Bradbury, 7-Hamish Watson, 6-Sam Skinner, 5-Grant Gilchrist, 4-Ben Toolis, 3-Willem Nel, 2-Stuart McInally (captain), 1-Allan Dell
Replacements: 16-Fraser Brown, 17-Gordon Reid, 18-Simon Berghan, 19-Jonny Gray, 20-Josh Strauss, 21-Greig Laidlaw, 22-Adam Hastings, 23-Chris Harris
Have you been targeted?
Tuan Phan of SimplyFI.org lists five signs you have been mis-sold to:
1. Your pension fund has been placed inside an offshore insurance wrapper with a hefty upfront commission.
2. The money has been transferred into a structured note. These products have high upfront, recurring commission and should never be in a pension account.
3. You have also been sold investment funds with an upfront initial charge of around 5 per cent. ETFs, for example, have no upfront charges.
4. The adviser charges a 1 per cent charge for managing your assets. They are being paid for doing nothing. They have already claimed massive amounts in hidden upfront commission.
5. Total annual management cost for your pension account is 2 per cent or more, including platform, underlying fund and advice charges.
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Revibe
Started: 2022
Founders: Hamza Iraqui and Abdessamad Ben Zakour
Based: UAE
Industry: Refurbished electronics
Funds raised so far: $10m
Investors: Flat6Labs, Resonance and various others
Company profile
Company name: Fasset
Started: 2019
Founders: Mohammad Raafi Hossain, Daniel Ahmed
Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: $2.45 million
Current number of staff: 86
Investment stage: Pre-series B
Investors: Investcorp, Liberty City Ventures, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Primal Capital, Wealthwell Ventures, FHS Capital, VN2 Capital, local family offices
Company Profile
Company name: Hoopla
Date started: March 2023
Founder: Jacqueline Perrottet
Based: Dubai
Number of staff: 10
Investment stage: Pre-seed
Investment required: $500,000
More on animal trafficking
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
Brief scoreline:
Wales 1
James 5'
Slovakia 0
Man of the Match: Dan James (Wales)
Zayed Sustainability Prize
Ain Issa camp:
- Established in 2016
- Houses 13,309 people, 2,092 families, 62 per cent children
- Of the adult population, 49 per cent men, 51 per cent women (not including foreigners annexe)
- Most from Deir Ezzor and Raqqa
- 950 foreigners linked to ISIS and their families
- NGO Blumont runs camp management for the UN
- One of the nine official (UN recognised) camps in the region
More from Neighbourhood Watch:
Married Malala
Malala Yousafzai is enjoying married life, her father said.
The 24-year-old married Pakistan cricket executive Asser Malik last year in a small ceremony in the UK.
Ziauddin Yousafzai told The National his daughter was ‘very happy’ with her husband.
How to donate
Text the following numbers:
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How Tesla’s price correction has hit fund managers
Investing in disruptive technology can be a bumpy ride, as investors in Tesla were reminded on Friday, when its stock dropped 7.5 per cent in early trading to $575.
It recovered slightly but still ended the week 15 per cent lower and is down a third from its all-time high of $883 on January 26. The electric car maker’s market cap fell from $834 billion to about $567bn in that time, a drop of an astonishing $267bn, and a blow for those who bought Tesla stock late.
The collapse also hit fund managers that have gone big on Tesla, notably the UK-based Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF.
Tesla is the top holding in both funds, making up a hefty 10 per cent of total assets under management. Both funds have fallen by a quarter in the past month.
Matt Weller, global head of market research at GAIN Capital, recently warned that Tesla founder Elon Musk had “flown a bit too close to the sun”, after getting carried away by investing $1.5bn of the company’s money in Bitcoin.
He also predicted Tesla’s sales could struggle as traditional auto manufacturers ramp up electric car production, destroying its first mover advantage.
AJ Bell’s Russ Mould warns that many investors buy tech stocks when earnings forecasts are rising, almost regardless of valuation. “When it works, it really works. But when it goes wrong, elevated valuations leave little or no downside protection.”
A Tesla correction was probably baked in after last year’s astonishing share price surge, and many investors will see this as an opportunity to load up at a reduced price.
Dramatic swings are to be expected when investing in disruptive technology, as Ms Wood at ARK makes clear.
Every week, she sends subscribers a commentary listing “stocks in our strategies that have appreciated or dropped more than 15 per cent in a day” during the week.
Her latest commentary, issued on Friday, showed seven stocks displaying extreme volatility, led by ExOne, a leader in binder jetting 3D printing technology. It jumped 24 per cent, boosted by news that fellow 3D printing specialist Stratasys had beaten fourth-quarter revenues and earnings expectations, seen as good news for the sector.
By contrast, computational drug and material discovery company Schrödinger fell 27 per cent after quarterly and full-year results showed its core software sales and drug development pipeline slowing.
Despite that setback, Ms Wood remains positive, arguing that its “medicinal chemistry platform offers a powerful and unique view into chemical space”.
In her weekly video view, she remains bullish, stating that: “We are on the right side of change, and disruptive innovation is going to deliver exponential growth trajectories for many of our companies, in fact, most of them.”
Ms Wood remains committed to Tesla as she expects global electric car sales to compound at an average annual rate of 82 per cent for the next five years.
She said these are so “enormous that some people find them unbelievable”, and argues that this scepticism, especially among institutional investors, “festers” and creates a great opportunity for ARK.
Only you can decide whether you are a believer or a festering sceptic. If it’s the former, then buckle up.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin
Director: Shawn Levy
Rating: 2.5/5
Company Profile
Name: Direct Debit System
Started: Sept 2017
Based: UAE with a subsidiary in the UK
Industry: FinTech
Funding: Undisclosed
Investors: Elaine Jones
Number of employees: 8
Our Time Has Come
Alyssa Ayres, Oxford University Press
