Galacticos II: Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo
The restored president of Real Madrid is ready to unveil a new blockbuster, but will it be the Portuguese striker?
Ian Hawkey, European Football Correspondent
Florentino Perez is a conjuror. The president of Real Madrid, who vanished from the job when the going got tough, reappeared in charge of the club six days ago. Quite an apparition it was, too. In a flash, all other possible candidates for the post stood aside and Perez waltzed back into the post without so much as a ballot form being printed.
That was when he started talking like the magician of old. Anybody who followed Real Madrid during the so-called Galactico Era, between 2000 and 2006, when Perez last held the presidency and collected superstars like stamps, instantly recognised his spiel, his mysterious axioms. “The costliest players are often the cheapest,” he said through his thin-lipped smile, preparing to break the world record for a transfer fee by signing Kaka from Milan. The Kaka deal, at a fee of about £58m, will be announced officially in the next two days. It is, Perez beams, the first of several eye-catching recruitments he plans for the summer.
The conjuror seems to be enjoying the sensations of déjà vu around his second coming. Kaka is his new Zinedine Zidane, whose £46m move from Juventus to Perez’s Madrid in 2001 set the last benchmark for global transfer fee extravagance. His new Luis Figo, whom he prised from Barcelona for about £37m, may be Cristiano Ronaldo, although Perez courteously says there will not be a battle over the Portuguese’s signature — “If I had to choose between the friendship of Manchester United and getting Ronaldo, I would choose the friendship” — and denies any knowledge of an existing, £80m agreement between Madrid and United.
His new Ronaldo, as in the Brazilian striker who joined Madrid in 2002, meanwhile may very well be David Villa, probably the most prized striker available in the current transfer window.
Almost any reflection on the shortcomings Perez exhibited during his previous reign is postponed. When he resigned his first presidency, he said he was doing so “for the good of the club”. Perez talked of a paternal relationship with his favoured footballers, a doting indulger of Zidane and Beckham, a stern, disappointed head-of-household whose relationships with Figo and Brazil’s Ronaldo eventually turned caustic and sour.
By the time he stood down, he had presided over the longest trophy drought in 50 years of Real Madrid history.
Yet the Perez who returns is hailed as a messianic magic man. Helpfully, his predecessor makes Perez look better almost every day. Ramon Calderon has been in and out of court during the past week answering questions on the corruption scandal that necessitated his departure. So when Perez talks of restoring “dignity” at the club, he can portray himself as the anti-rascal. He wears the guise of financial genius, the construction magnate so successful that even in a severe recession he is ready to have Madrid break records for transfer spending.
Perez, 62, is clever with money. He was born into it, the son of a madrileno who established a chain of perfume shops and first took little Florentino to see a match at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium when he was four. In the 1950s and early 60s, he watched Real Madrid become the dominant team in the European Cup. When Spain found democracy after Franco died in 1975, Perez launched a political career, initially in local government in the Spanish capital. He cultivated good contacts, which would prove useful when an interest in building and property turned into his principal activity.
Both strands of his professional life were helpful to his first presidency of Real. A controversial sale of the club’s city centre training site brought in capital to ease the club’s debts and allowed the mega-bids for Figo, Zidane, Brazil’s Ronaldo, Beckham and Robinho. Perez says their appeal made the extravagance worthwhile financially. Television revenues, which for domestic games Madrid negotiate directly with broadcasters, and attendances at the Bernabeu rose. Madrid also increased income from sponsors and from pre-season tours with their star-studded line-up.
Initially, the team were also successful. They won the Spanish leagues of 2001 and 2003 and the Champions League of 2002. Then the silverware vanished, only to return under the shifty Calderon, whose two full years as president brought successive Liga titles in 2007 and 2008. This is the awkward fact for florentinistas, Perez’s cheerleaders, to confront: Madrid improved when he left. But Perez whips up some vivid fawning. Emilio Butragueno, one of his many directors of football — he often sacks coaches and technical gurus — once called Perez “a superior being”.
So why did the first Galactico era stumble so badly in its later years? Perez touched on a consensus of opinion when he spoke of having “brought up badly” the players. After nourishing the club’s superstar aura, selling the idea that celebrity as well as skill brought in money, Perez acknowledged that with his model came a drop in professional standards.
Steve McManaman, who was at Madrid for Perez’s successful early years and left as the decline began, called it “the Disneyfication of Real Madrid”. The culture of the Galacticos, he recalls, “was divisive, the opposite of team-building”. The midfielder Santi Solari identified institutional class barriers. “There’s limited room for us, the middle class,” he said.
Claude Makelele complained bitterly that his salary was a fraction of that earned by Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo and Beckham. When Makelele left for Chelsea, his absence from a midfield with Beckham, Zidane and Figo hurt Madrid.
This time around, though he speaks and acts like the Perez of seven or eight years ago, the conjuror is dealing with altered circumstances. He is not entirely ignoring the recession — “we once brought in €15m for playing two matches in Japan. That would not happen in the current climate,” he noted — but knows that in his transfer dealings the ambitions of Chelsea will frequently be used to inflate prices by clubs selling the footballers Madrid want. He should still get Villa because the player wants to remain in La Liga. As for Manchester United’s Ronaldo, that saga has some time yet to run.
There is no imminent danger of overstaffing the squad with flamboyant players. Madrid last season were a poor, dull second to Barcelona in Spain and awful in the Champions League. A rational assessment of their current resources would suggest they need improving in seven or eight positions of the 11. They have an outstanding goalkeeper, Iker Casillas, and now have one outfield player close to the same standard. But Kaka, even all £58m of him, cannot carry them on his own.
Who’s next? Names on the Bernabeu shopping list
Franck Ribery Winger, French
Bayern Munich want more than £35m and hope that a genuine auction, involving Chelsea and perhaps Manchester United, might get them there
David Villa Striker, Spanish
Villa says he’s happy at Valencia but their monstrous debts oblige them to sell. Perez says he wants more Spaniards; Villa wants to stay in Spain. None of that encourages Chelsea, who are willing to pay about £40m but might see Madrid snatch him for less
David Silva Left midfield, Spanish
Also at Valencia. If he moves to Madrid and so do Ribery and Ronaldo, things start to look a little crowded on the flanks. Would cost £20m-plus
Xabi Alonso Central midfield, Spanish
Madrid tried to buy him from Real Sociedad in Perez’s first reign. He would give them balance in midfield and more purpose. Perez senses Liverpool may need a quick £18m
A centre-half Any nationality
Nemanja Vidic’s name has been bandied about but that move is unlikely, not least because he knows Real Madrid is a centre-half’s graveyard
