Real Madrid are probably going to get kicked out of the Copa del Rey. By itself, this isn’t a huge deal—the Copa is a fine trophy, but a club as massive as Madrid don’t measure success of domestic cups—but the reason Madrid are at risk of being eliminated is instructive.

In a round of 32 match against Cádiz on Wednesday, Rafa Benítez sent out a team full of young players and substitutes, among them Russian winger Denis Cheryshev, who was supposed to be serving a suspension. Last season, when Cheryshev was on loan at Villarreal, he picked up a one-match ban in the Copa for yellow card accumulation in a game in which the Yellow Submarine were eliminated from the tournament. The suspension carried over to this season’s Copa, no one at Real Madrid noticed, and Benítez used an illegal player.

Cádiz have filed a formal complaint with RFEF (Spain’s national soccer federation), and the situation is pretty straightforward: Madrid are going to get booted from the competition unless some seriously shady politicking goes down behind the scenes.

The Cheryshev situation is yet another indication that it’s amateur hour at the world’s biggest club. This embarrassment follows a 4-0 drubbing at the hands of Barcelona two weekends ago, in which Madrid were taken apart in the 11th minute by a typically well-placed Luis Suárez goal, then spent the next 80 minutes imploding in slow motion. They were overrun in the midfield, useless in attack, and positively shredded by Suárez, Neymar and Andrés Iniesta. In a matchup of two supposed juggernauts, Madrid were laughed off the field.

Barcelona do this sort of thing to even very good teams sometimes, but Real Madrid’s four-goal loss pointed to their dysfunction as much as Barça’s brilliance. As currently constituted, Los Blancos don’t make much sense. In El Clásico, Benítez played a five-man midfield composed of Toni Kroos and Luka Modrić at the double pivot, and James Rodríguez, Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo in more advanced positions. It’s a splendid collective of talent, but not one of those players is particularly apt to put in a tackle, and Bale and Ronaldo tend to check out when their team doesn’t have possession. Against a great attacking collective like Barcelona, that’s too much firepower and not nearly enough steel.

Rafa might have been thinking the same thing, as he fussed over his starting eleven, but unlike at previous gigs at Valencia, Liverpool and Napoli, he has more than tactics to consider when selecting his lineup. Madrid have too many stars for too few positions.

Kroos and Modrić can play together, but they’re both pure playmakers who thrive when paired with a more commanding, traditional holding midfielder type.

Bale and Ronaldo are downright redundant: pacey, goal-scoring forwards with slightly damaging selfish streaks.

James should be playing behind Karim Benzema in Rafa’s 4-2-3-1, but Bale has demanded that spot.

Isco belongs at the “10,” too, but he has been pushed out to the right.

Casemiro is the sort of deep-lying, positionally prudent midfielder Benítez loves, but if he plays, that means Modric or Kroos get dropped.

Mateo Kovačić, Lucas Silva, and Jesé—exciting starlets, all of them—don’t play much at all.

And, not for nothing, this team also doesn’t have a backup left back, for some reason. Danilo, a natural right back who was signed over the summer for 30 million euros, occasionally deputizes for Marcelo while looking patently terrified to kick the ball with his left foot.

Against Barcelona, Rafa Benítez basically just picked the most famous lineup available to him, the players with the highest FIFA ratings. For a manager who is usually quite tactically astute and has caught heat this season in Madrid for managing too conservatively, this starting eleven didn’t seem right. There were rumblings after the loss that Rafa selected the stars he did for political reasons, fearing Real Madrid chairman Florentino Pérez—sort of the Jerry Jones of La Liga—would balk at a more balanced squad. If Rafa had, say, benched Bale and lost anyway, he might have been looking for a new job on Monday. So the skipper went with glam and glitz and got pummeled.

When Pérez fired Carlo Ancelotti at the end of last season, he was asked what the Italian did to deserve a dismissal and literally said “I don’t know.” One can imagine him giving the same sort of response when he inevitably sacks Rafa Benítez, whether it’s two months or two years from now. Pérez is a rich, powerful man who doesn’t often hear the word no, and he governs Real Madrid with a philosophy that’s no philosophy at all: he loves big-name players and he hates losing. He’s also exceedingly impatient.

The problem is that Pérez doesn’t have much concern for how the big names he brings in every summer fit together. He doesn’t seem to understand that while, sure, Madrid can almost always out-talent La Liga’s dregs, when they encounter Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, Champions League competition, or Spain’s deep second tier—Sevilla, Valencia, Villarreal, et al.—cohesion and strategy matter. Atleti played Real Madrid eight times last season, losing once, drawing three times, and winning four, including a 4-0 blowout at the Vicente Calderón. Madrid had better players; Atleti had better organization, better balance, better teamwork, and better coaching.

It remains to be seen whether his club getting slaughtered by its two greatest rivals in consecutive years will be enough to convince Pérez that he needs to put some genuine consideration toward team construction: hire a manager who is allowed to do his job, hire a sporting director to make intelligent signings that create a squad that has solidity and sense, not 37 attacking midfielders and a few center backs. Pérez is a stubborn man, and he’ll never be proven completely wrong. Hell, Madrid won the Champions League two seasons ago with a team that was slightly out-of-whack.

But right now, the club is sitting in third place in La Liga. The title chase is beyond them, with Barcelona playing as well as they are and Atleti in second without even having hit their stride yet. Plus, they’re on the verge of exiting the Copa del Rey due to organizational incompetence you would expect from a Segunda club. Real Madrid are just like their chairman: rich and powerful. And self-destructively clueless.