Real Madrid Face First Trophyless Season Since 2021 as UCL Hopes Fade

Madrid: Real Madrid are staring at the prospect of a trophyless campaign for the first time since 2020-21, after a damaging first-leg defeat in the European Cup quarter-finals left Álvaro Arbeloa's side on the brink of elimination. The bleak outlook follows a weekend that saw their already faint LaLiga title hopes all but extinguished, while Tuesday's limp display against Bayern Munich confirmed the German giants as overwhelming favourites to advance in the UEFA Champions League (UCL). According to Oman News Agency, the 2025-26 season risks entering the club's history books for all the wrong reasons. Madrid have not ended a campaign without silverware since Zinedine Zidane's second stint at the helm in 2020-21-a season marked by the pandemic, in which they finished as runners-up in LaLiga to Atlético Madrid and reached at least the Champions League semi-finals before falling to Chelsea. Their cup performances that year were dismal: a Spanish Super Cup semi-final defeat to Athletic Club and a first-round Copa del Rey exit to Alcoyano. The parallels with the current campaign are striking. Madrid sit second in La Liga, seven points adrift of the leaders with a daunting trip to Barcelona's Camp Nou still to come. Last weekend's limp defeat to Mallorca-a match they needed to win to pile pressure on Barça, who were visiting Atlético-laid bare the team's fragile state. The performance was as poor as the display that saw them dumped out of the Copa del Rey in the second round by Albacete in mid-January. That defeat, at the Carlos Belmonte stadium, marked Arbeloa's first match in charge following the dismissal of Xabi Alonso. Yet even the change on the bench failed to spark a reaction from a side that, under Alonso, had just lost the Spanish Super Cup final to Barcelona in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The spectre of a trophyless season casts a harsh light on the entire squad, with Kylian Mbappe under particular scrutiny. The French international signed for Madrid with the express ambition of conquering Europe, but neither this season nor last have the club come close to lifting the continent's biggest prize. As Madrid await next Wednesday's second leg in Munich, the sobering reality is that with Mbappe, they remain far adrift of Europe's elite-clubs they once dominated with unchallenged superiority. Should Madrid succumb in Germany and Barcelona clinch the league title, the 2025-26 campaign would follow a similarly barren 2024-25 season, in which the club contested seven trophies but managed only the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup-a haul that ultimately cost Carlo Ancelotti his position on the Chamartín bench.