Are Real Madrid & Florentino Perez Making the Same Galactico Mistakes Again?
There's something awfully familiar—and awfully concerning—about Real Madrid's transfer rampage to sign classy, silky No. 10s.
Toni Kroos is now a Blanco, costing a cool €25 million, and James Rodriguez looks destined to don the famous white shirt too. He'll cost considerably more, closer to €88 million in truth, as chairman Florentino Perez stops at nothing to acquire his desired transfer targets.
The overloading of immense attacking players has left Real Madrid in a slightly odd spot, with one end of the pitch teeming with quality and the other lacking in numbers or discipline.
How, after all, do you play Kroos, James, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, Isco, Angel Di Maria, Sami Khedira, Luka Modric, Xabi Alonso and Asier Illarramendi in a viable system?
The simple answer is you can't, and the optimal formation to cram as many into the XI as possible is the 4-2-3-1—the system manager Carlo Ancelotti abandoned early in the 2013-14 campaign due to its relative ineffectiveness.
Arguably the best midfield craftable is Ronaldo, James and Bale ahead of a Modric/Xabi Alonso pivot. Khedira and Isco are marginalised, Illarramendi is forgotten and Kroos dips in anywhere he possibly can.
Inevitable talk of players leaving has occurred off the back of the Kroos signing and James link, with Khedira heavily linked to Arsenal and Angel Di Maria to Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus and Manchester United, per the Daily Express' James Dickenson and Jamie Anderson.
Despite winning the UEFA Champions League for the 10th time—"La Decima" as it was so obsessively named—Ancelotti has essentially had the chemistry of his side torn apart. You should never stand still in the market, but these actions—this wholesale overhaul—is not advised.
It'd be forgivable, perhaps, if this was the first time Perez's global marketing and name-chasing strategies had seemingly torn apart a strong side, but the sickening thing is it's not: It's the second.
The barren four-year run between 2003 and 2007—a time period in which Los Galacticos failed to win the Liga title and even finished fourth in 2004 under Carlos Queiroz—is widely attributed to Perez's obsession with star names at the expense of the system, formation and team.
It took David Beckham—a €35 million acquisition—that entire four years to win a Liga trophy, with the only other piece of silverware achieved during his spell at the Bernabeu a Supercopa Espana right at the beginning.
Following the 2002 Champions League win, Perez made a succession of mistakes due to his obsession with attacking firepower, including releasing Esteban Cambiasso on a free transfer to Internazionale and selling Claude Makelele—the world's best defensive midfielder—for £17 million after refusing to up his salary.
The policy to spend high on attackers and look to Castilla for cheap defensive options became known as the Zidanes y Pavones approach, though the youth products weren't always up to scratch.
It didn't work; Los Blancos were in the European gutters, so to speak, for half a decade before returning to contention under Jose Mourinho. Just as Ancelotti finds the right fit and the right system to allow his players to shine, Perez piles two players on his plate to ruin the harmony and consistency of the squad.
There's a real chance that Perez is making the same mistakes, that lead to the same consequences, as before following the Zinedine Zidane golden era. Blanco fans hope their club won't be taken from the highest highs in 2014 to the lowest lows just a year or so later, but confidence in Perez is low.
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