Is Real Madrid Becoming Its Own Worst Enemy?

July 3, 2009

Alex Nekrassov jnr writes: Just when Manchester United had lost the world’s best player, Cristiano Ronaldo, to Real Madrid, it appears that the man they had in mind to plug the gap left by the Portuguese winger, France international and Lyon striker, Karim Benzema, is about to join the Spaniards in a deal worth at least £30m.Just to remind you, Real Madrid have broken football’s world transfer records twice in the same summer: first they signed Brazilian playmaker, Kaka, from AC Milan for a not so measly £55m and, within a week, broke the very same record they set by signing Man United’s Ronaldo for £80m. Together, by plucking him right from under the noses of Manchester United, Benzema’s signing along with various ’smaller’ additions, including the central defender from Valencia, Raul Albiol for a ‘mere’ £14m, the club has taken its stratospheric spending beyond the £180m mark for the summer. And it doesn’t look like it will stop there, with the club president, Florentino Perez, saying that there would be no ceiling on the amount the world’s richest club by annual revenue could spend to strengthen the squad. While Real can expect to make up a percentage of the money spent through the sale of its fringe squad members, including a number of players from a big Dutch contingent, the club will probably only expect to claw back, at best, twenty percent of the amount they will have spent by the time the summer transfer window closes in September.
What does this obscene spending binge mean for Real Madrid? The club are no strangers to spending big. They have broken most of the modern day football transfer records and have remained committed to short term policy of buying, what the fans refer to as, the galacticos, in return demanding an immediate trophy haul on all fronts, both domestic and European. As with any Real Madrid manager, and especially one who commands a team worth in excess of £300m, the pressure to deliver results in the first season will be immense. Given the Real Madrid’s board trigger happy approach to coaches (they fired Fabio Copello a few weeks after he brought Real Madrid’s four year barren spell to a close by winning Spain’s domestic league championship, La Liga), Manuel Pellegrini, the highly rated Paraguayan and former manager of overachieving Spanish team Villarreal, will have his work cut out. Perez will demand at the very least for the team boasting some of the biggest stars in world football to secure the Spanish domestic league championship and the Champions League, and do it with style and class, playing the attacking brand of football the fans in the Santiago Bernabeu stadium have grown accustomed to. This will not be an easy challenge, given that while Pellegrini has a reputation as a master tactician, preferring flair football, he does not have consistent experience at the very top flight of club football. Pellegrini will hope that Real Madrid’s first defeat will not trigger a falling house of cards effect.

Secondly, Real Madrid will have to overcome what is the small matter of Barcelona, last season’s treble league, cup and Champions League winners. The bad news for Real, is that the Barcelona team is expected to remain largely intact. Real’s spending spree will provide Barcelona further impetus for chopping down their bitter rivals – something they managed to convincingly last year, coming out 6-2 winners at the Santiago Bernabeu, and rather ironically in the process providing the ultimate catalyst to Real’s mind blowing transfer frenzy this summer. As is usually not customary in a summer transfer window, Barcelona’s camp seems largely settled and in harmony, and the challenge to the dislodge the current Spanish champions from their lodge is the best and most fluent attacking team in the world will be a mammoth task, even for Real Madrid’s superstars.

The third and final issue Real Madrid will have to contend with is themselves. How do you keep a group of individuals earning, at various levels, in excess of £100,000 a week, grounded and in harmony with one another? Kaka a side, given his humbleness, (he doesn’t go to clubs, he married his girlfriend of 18 when he was 23 and neither have made the headlines and he gives twenty percent of his weekly earnings to the church), it will be a locker room filled with egos and vanity. Will a team full of pampered twinkle toes be able to roll their sleeves up when the going gets tough? I’m not sure. I expect that when the first defeat comes, you will hear various public statements from players, blaming the formation, their teammates and generally everyone but themselves. If Pellegrini can address this, he will have won half the battle, for there is no doubting that a starting 11 led by, among others, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka, has the potential to be extra special. But this potential has to be converted into deadly efficiency, and quickly. Is Pellegrini the man to do it? That’s the ultimate question that he will have to come up with an answer to if he has to remain at the helm of the team in the 2010/2011 season.

You’d be forgiven for feeling animosity and jealousy toward the Real Madrid fans. On a weekly basis, they will be witnessing a team boasting players of unspeakable ability. If the team fulfil half its potential, you can expect a top two finish in the league, victors of the Spanish cup and at least a semi final spot in the Champions League. But that won’t be enough. For the spending spree to be considered worth it, they will have to win everything, and even for a team with some of the world’s finest players, it will mean being at the top of their game in every match. Given the financial outlay this summer, failure is simply not an option.

– End –

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