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By Andreas Vou (@AndreasVou89)

Carlo Ancelotti has been relieved of his duties as manager of Real Madrid, just a year on from guiding the Spanish giants to their fabled tenth Champions League triumph.

The man entrusted by president Florentino Perez to land the club its desperately craved Decima had delivered in his very first season. It was May 24, 2014 in Lisbon’s Estadio da Luz where Los Blancos finally landed their prized Decima after a 11 year wait. Yet, on May 25, 2015 Perez announced the Italian manager’s dismissal after a trophyless campaign.

At almost any other club, such a sacking would cause quite a shock. But this is Real Madrid. More specifically, Florentino Perez’s Real Madrid.

This is the ninth managerial dismissal in his 12 years at the club, and few have been more irrational. 

While ending the year without a single trophy is not something that anyone involved with Real Madrid would be content with, the thought process behind sacking a manager who had built such a solid rapport with supporters and players alike has to be brought into question. 

After all, not only did Ancelotti win the Champions League but up until January this year, his side were playing by far the best football in the division and led a win-streak of 22 games before defeat at Valencia, as well as key injuries, derailed their season.

The two Real Madrid managers prior to Ancelotti - Manuel Pellegrini and Jose Mourinho - were rather contrasting in their management styles; the former’s gentlemanly conduct was eventually seen by many as an absence of natural leadership skills while the latter, though a strict disciplinarian, often demonstrated negative football, going against the club’s tradition which led to plenty of division amongst the squad by the time he left.

But that is exactly the problem with Perez. It appears that he is not quite sure what he wants from any manager he hires. The worrying long-term sign for the club is that the man in charge has no long-term vision in terms of the type of manager he wants.

This problem goes back to the beginning of his first spell in charge, and remains his most famous dismissal of all. Vicente del Bosque won two of the three league titles that Madrid have won in Perez’s 12 years as president, as well as one of the two Champions League titles before being shown the door in 2003.

Ancelotti seemed to possess all of the necessary qualities to take the club forward on a long-term basis. Leadership, attractive football and team-unity are three traits which few if any Madrid managers over the years have managed to balance.

The response from the players in the days prior to the Italian’s dismissal was unprecedented, starkly different to the silence surrounding Mourinho’s departure from the club two years ago.

“If it was up to me, Ancelotti would stay. He is a winner even if this year we did not win anything,” Brazilian full-back Marcelo said.

Luka Modric, whose injury earlier in the campaign has been pinpointed by many as the catalyst to Real’s downfall in the league, feels Ancelotti got the best out of him: "All I can say is that he is a great coach and person. I’ve played my best football under him,” before adding: “Sometimes, even though you do not win trophies, it does not mean you are no good.”

Even Cristiano Ronaldo publicly voiced his desire to continue working with the manager again next season via his Twitter account, after the final league game of the season on Saturday. 

The fact that the two biggest sports papers in Madrid, Marca and AS, have also come out both supporting Ancelotti and questioning Perez’s decision, tells you all you need to know.

Oscar Campillo in Marca summed up the situation quit aptly, writing that “the plan is that there is no plan,” while AS director Alfredo Relano claimed that in the eyes of the president “it is always somebody else’s fault.”

It seems as though it will take nothing but pure domination to please the president, but in a league where Madrid compete alongside arguably the most consistent side in the world over the last decade, it appears that his ego is playing a long-standing battle with realism. 

Nor the players, the media or the majority of the fans support the latest managerial dismissal but, judging by the president’s record, any hopes that he will change his ways are farfetched.