Real Madrid and the unbalance in the European market (Yahoo)

Something similar, though more due to the noise and the symbolism than for the investment occurred in the years nineties when the Milan acquired the transfer of Gianluiggi Lentini from Torini, starting a scandal that even The Vatican forwarded and opinion, declaring without any doubt against the use of such figures for the football.

Today, that transfer of Lentini of 1992 may sound almost as a children´s tale. The Real Madrid, seventeen years later had multiplied by ten that expense to recover the glamour of the sweet years of the early XXI century with their president Florentino Perez bringing to the White House players as Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema, Raul Albiol, Xabi Alonso or Arbeloa.

Though the promise of Perez when he reached the presidency scarcely three months ago and the unanimity of the members, he referred to recover the ground lost vs the Barcelona and the institutional image after the chaos that meant the stage of 2003-2009 and particularly, the last years of Ramon Calderon, that president seemed to have over passed all the previsions and obliged to make serious changes by those who manage the world football.

Slowly came voices of complain from all Europe, specially from the French Michel Platini, UEFA´s president and from Arsene Wenger, coach of the English Arsenal that well could arrive to Madrid as he was of the preferred until the direction of the Real Madrid decided for the Chilean engineer Manuel Pellegrini.

Platini and Wenger take notice of the unbalance generated in the footballistic market, payment of figures so spectacular in times of crisis all over Europe, with so many people out of work, and at the same time, generates that the amount in general go up too much of the value for other transfers, and even the coach took courage to talk about “economic doping” in contrast with the disputable (also) Arsenal´s model, though register young players, in many cases they are taken from countries of economically worse situation to place them in their juvenile divisions and then in first, making them to appear as their own, as formed their own London house.

The Barcelona, gave new round in these polices decanting for the model of registering youth formed in campus that the Catalonian club implements in those countries of origin and then they take the best older when they have already been formed in their own places so they should not suffer from the being uprooted though in the meanwhile, they waste also fortunes in some registrations as that of the Swede Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

The sport director, and assistant to the president of the Real Madrid, the Argentine Jorge Valdano, always criticized this system, as he ironically denominated “Havechange” the ex president of the FIFA Joan Havelange when he said that he was selling “a product called football” now he justifies those expenses explaining that a club as his has the capacity to do it for all it generates and because it recovers the investment (something that could have sustained the Belgian-Brazilian directive in the years eighties, when he pronounced that famous sentence).

It is true that a good part of the explanation for such registrations is related to the important incomes that for those times the Spanish clubs receive, be it by television rights that now can negotiate individually and that availed to increase them due to the war of two television companies (Prisa and Mediapro), or due to state reclassifications of their different grounds that use to go through complicated political negotiations with the governments in turn.

But it is also true that the Real Madrid comes to play a match rather easy, that to rise so much the probability to win with so much investment that finally they have more to lose than to win because obtaining the success it will be more logical and expected with such an investment. On the other way, if they are not lucky, they would pay more expensively.

What cannot be denied is that the Real Madrid cannot go through another season as before, especially what refers to the Champions League, where for five seasons they cannot enter into the eight-final after having won three cups between 1998 and 2002. The ex coach Juan de Ramon already said after undisputable defeat vs the Liverpool in the last season (0-1 and 0-4): “ it´s what we have, it´s the level that today the Real Madrid has”

Ramos, now almost forgotten, generated a second spectacular round in the Spanish League, in which the Real Madrid won almost all their matches and only confronted one hard defeat vs the Barcelona in the Santiago Bernabeu (2-6) taking them out of the fight to obtain a new championship, but it did not seem too strong, to fall against the perhaps best Barcelona of their history.

However, so are the times with the Real Madrid and there are no critics interested in the decisions of changing of the route. It does not seem time to meditate whether it is well or bad to alter the market or register, together, the best of the world. The measure is taken and the new players, already wearing white. There only remains to see now whether they get the desired results.