Sergio Ramos blames an inadequate pre-season tour of the USA for Real Madrid's slow start to the season, according to a report today.
The website grada360.com claims that the defender spoke out in a heated dressing-room debate in the wake of Saturday's 1-0 loss at Sevilla, blaming the club's poor early-season form on a summer trip to Los Angeles in which they did 'everything except what needed to be done.'
Ramos, a former Sevilla player, allegedly told a friend at the Ramons Sanchez Pizjuan that most of his teammates were 'fried' physically as a result of poor preparation.
“What we need is more intensity, to play the way we train,” Ramos is quoted as saying in the dressing room.
He is then said to have pointed the finger at Gonzalo Higuain and the other forwards for their lack of effort during the game.
“It can't be the case that Xabi [Alonso] is shattered because he has to do the running for four of you, who are doing nothing.”
The report also suggests that Coach Jose Mourinho stoked the fires of discontent by berating his players immediately after the game.
“I am going to the press conference. I am not sending anyone else. As you are all incapable of standing up for me on the field, I will defend myself.”
However in his Monday press conference ahead of the Champions League Group D opener against Manchester City, Mourinho attacked the suggestion that pre-season preparations were to blame for one of their worst starts to a campaign in recent memory.
Instead, the Portuguese pointed the finger at an overloaded calendar of international fixtures.
"The pre-season was interrupted by what all of us coaches consider to be an aberration on the calendar, although we all know we have to adapt to it," he said.
"After a European Championship or World Cup you start late and with two different groups. You work and then after two weeks of work this aberration comes along in which every national team goes wherever they want and does whatever they want with the players.
"It happens with every team that has a lot of internationalists. The players go off and then reappear two days before playing in the league, which is not the best.
"When we coaches meet at UEFA discussions we all say behind closed doors that it is an aberration and then when the doors open some say it and others do not."
