'Real are no longer kings of Europe'

That is precisely why Sven-Goran Eriksson has been mooted as a possible long-term successor to Camacho. The England coach is known to enjoy good relations with his players, three of whom - Beckham, Michael Owen and Jonathan Woodgate - are at Real. But however much some England fans and Football Association directors might wish it, the Swede is not high on Real's agenda right now.

They have sounded him out informally but the compensation and high salary which comes with recruiting Eriksson makes his recruitment unlikely. Despite his insistence to the contrary, the club's finances are nowhere near as rosy as Perez would like to pretend. Two years ago, when the post of Real coach appeared to be the plum job on the continent, Wenger was their top target.

But the Frenchman was quick to realise that he could wield far more influence at Highbury than at the Bernabeu. While Wenger has gone on to plan for the future and build a young, attack-minded side, based in part on new recruits from Spain like Jose Reyes and Cesc Fabregas, Real have gone backwards. Wenger is now out of Real's league. They probably won't even bother to try to tempt him this time.

Real's biggest problem is that the present team are the personal creation of Perez, a multi-millionaire construction magnate who has taken a child-like delight in putting together a sticker-book collection of some of the biggest stars in the game.

The team certainly ranks high in the glamour stakes and there is little doubt that Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, Beckham, Luis Figo, Raul and Owen would sweep all before them in any fantasy football league, but the reality on the pitch has been somewhat different.

The team have been on the decline ever since Perez decided to sack Del Bosque and off-load midfield enforcer Claude Makelele to Chelsea because he had the cheek to ask for a salary that reflected his importance to the team.

Perez thought he could continue recruiting only big-name attack-minded players, who would earn vast salaries but at the same time enable the club to win lucrative advertising contracts and television deals.

The gaps in the squad would be filled with low-paid recruits from the club's youth teams. The problem was it just did not work. Without Makelele, Del Bosque's successor, Carlos Queiroz was forced to play new recruit Beckham as a holding midfielder, a role to which he was completely unsuited, and to survive with a fragile back four.

The result was that when it came to the business end of last season, Real simply imploded and ended the campaign without any silverware for the first time in five years. Perez, who had to win the support of the discontented fans in order to be re-elected as president, made the populist decision of replacing the smooth, suave Queiroz with the blunt, no-nonsense Camacho. He was meant to bring a little oldfashioned discipline to a squad that was believed to have become complacent and increasingly divided between the highly paid Galacticos and the rest.

On Camacho's urging, Perez tried to sign Patrick Vieira to solve the side's problems in midfield but with the Real president balked at paying a ball-winner the same salary as a glamorous attacker.

The Camacho move backfired too as Perez prefers to put the interests of his big stars ahead of the demands of the coach. The problem is that Perez has now been left with a squad that is ageing and lacking in that vital spark. On the evidence of last night's lame performance, Garcia Remon will have his work cut out if he is to restore the faith of the fans.

And if he can't do it, there are now serious questions marks over whether any of Europe's top coaches would be willing to take the job on.