By David Wiseman
June 10th 2009 @ 2:10am
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Real Madrid’s riches buys the club too many Chiefs
Real Madrid's David Beckham runs at the end of a Spanish league match - AP Photo/Paul White
Football’s silly season has been set off with a bang by the announcement that Kaka is leaving the San Siro for the Bernabéu. His £56m transfer fee is a new world record.
Many clubs were chasing the signature of Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite and ultimately it was the glitz and glamour of Real Madrid which seduced him.
It is interesting that Real Madrid are claiming that they want to launch Galactico Part II because the first one wasn’t exactly a resounding success.
It is bad enough for them that it has been seven years since they won the Champions League. The fact that Barcelona has won it twice since then is simply unacceptable.
The final of next year’s Champions League is going to be in Madrid and they are doing everything they can to ensure they will be there.
When I say everything, I mean throw around as much money as they can.
Real Madrid is able to treat the game like fantasy football. It is not out of the question that they sign all of David Villa, Franck Ribery and Carlos Tevez.
The question is – how does a fantasy team translate into reality?
All those zeroes in the paycheck translate to some massive egos. You may have a huge squad of stars, but you still can only pick 11 of them to start. The ones on the bench won’t be happy, the ones not even on the bench much less so.
Politics starts to play a huge part with agents and team officials having an opinion as to who should play and who shouldn’t.
The pressure then starts to build.
On the field, the problem when everyone is a superstar is that there are too many Chiefs and not enough Indians. Someone has to be prepared to do the grunt work and be prepared to stain their white uniform and mess up their hair.
There is nothing the no-names of La Liga love more than making the celebrities look foolish.
Real Madrid may have a lot of money, but all that does is buy them a more expensive type of headache. The expectations for them couldn’t be higher.
Only trophies will satisfy the masses and recently the well has gone dry, especially in Europe. They haven’t even made it past the first knockout round of the Champions League since 2004.
The pressure is definitely going to be on Kaka and whoever his new team-mates are going to be.
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Ryan Steele said | June 10th 2009 @ 10:50am | Report comment
The official transfer fee was actually marginally over £58 million (€67.2 million). It’s the highest transfer fee in pounds (due to exchange rates), but the highest in euros (which is the only currency being dealth with between the clubs) is still Zinedine Zidane’s transfer from Juventus to Real Madrid, in 2001, which was €73.5 million (could be converted to “a mere” £46 million at that time).
It’s also been stated tha Kaka made the move to help the club he loves – AC Milan – keep out of financial trouble. More a mutual agreement between the three parties, than anything.
Madrid have a massive €200 million transfer budget for the off-season, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see plenty of exciting changes at the Bernabeu; possibly half of the “Galacticos 2.0″ outfit moving in by the start of the new season.
Carlos Tevez has states that he would prefer to stay in England, as he and his family are happy there, and is likely to do so, with Manchester City having put an offer on his plate, and United reportedly willing to pay the owner of Tevez’s rights, Kia Joorabchian, the required fee for full ownership.
Frank Ribery, if offered, is likely to head to Madrid. In all honesty, it could probably be the best move he could make. It’s also reported that Valencia and Madrid have agreed on a price for David Villa.
Cristiano Ronaldo is the biggest focus in the world media, though. While he continually says he wants to stay at United (for now, at least), it hasn’t stopped the various reports and speculation. A transfer between United and Madrid is unlikely to happen in this transfer window, however, as Sir Alex and co. are reluctant to release their star child.
Madrid looks likely to out-media Manchester City, this year.
whiskeymac said | June 10th 2009 @ 12:35pm | Report comment
galacticos were all glitz and crap defence…. they fell apart when they lost makele to chelski. so unless there’s balance in the team they may be great for selling shirts, but won’t necessarily do much more… still, great fanatsy football. oh and they will probably need to have manager for longer than half a season too.
Apart from Laporta’s (sour grapes ahead of his own raiding of other clubs) comments is anyone else (ie Platini or Blatter) going to stand up to the latest distortion of the transfer market. Surely this is the kind of financial vulagrism and oligarchic inspired irresponsibility (of spending so much on a few players to the dertiment of other leagues and when the club is in so much debt) is what they abhor …or does such sentiment only apply to those chavvy nouveau EPL teams and not the Euro-stocracy?
Slippery Jim said | June 11th 2009 @ 6:57pm | Report comment
Ronaldo to Madrid for a new record £80 million? (cue ominous music)…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/jun/11/cristiano-ronaldo-manchester-united-real-madrid-transfer
MVDave said | June 11th 2009 @ 8:22pm | Report comment
Ronaldo has done a great job at United with a hat trick of EPL titles, a UCL title etc. At Au$160million it is a great deal for the Reds and the money will apparently be given to the ‘Scottish One’ to strengthen the squad. Good luck to Ronaldo but he already has an injury cloud for the start of next season so well done ManU!!
haka_cl said | July 10th 2009 @ 7:20am | Report comment
Galacticos part I had the same problem…great group of players on the team list but too many ‘Big Egos’ playing together on the field, to the point that you could perceive that actually there wasn’t a proper ‘team’ playing together…I wish the best to their new Chilean coach (Pellegrini) but I think he has a tough task ahead of him.
Like better Barcelona´s aproach with players ‘made’ at home and a couple of key players from abroad….