Ranking Real Madrid's Greatest over-30 Signings of the Last 20 Years
Real Madrid aren't shy about making a big splash in the transfer market, but one aspect of the business dealings that has been noticeable over the past couple of decades is the propensity to sign either top-quality youngsters or else established names in the primes of their careers.
What they have tended to stay away from, however, has been the more experienced veterans, the over-30 players in the respective twilights of their careers.
While not necessarily long-term investments, such players can become integral parts of the team, providing a cool head or important depth in a squad, even over a period of a season or two—but Real have rarely taken that course of action to boost numbers.
In fact, over the past 20 years, they've signed precisely six players aged 30 or over. The last of the group signed back in 2012/13, with every new outfield signing since then being 26 or under, while goalkeepers Keylor Navas and Kiko Casilla were 27 and 28 respectively when they joined.
We've taken a look back at the six over-30 additions, assessed their contributions in the shirt of Los Blancos and ranked them according to how successful they were at the Santiago Bernabeu.
6. Emerson, 2006/07
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Bottom of the pile is Emerson, the Brazilian midfielder who swapped Turin for Madrid in 2006 and seems to have wished ever since that he never made the switch.
With Juventus relegated as part of the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal, the midfielder followed manager Fabio Capello to the Santiago Bernabeu and would have hoped to have been a big hit in La Liga.
A powerful, dominant and composed holding player at his best, Emerson never hit top gear in Spain and was left out of the team for much of the second half of the campaign after a series of below-par performances. He wasn't a regular goalscorer, so his single goal for the season wasn't a surprise, but missing matches against Barcelona, Valencia and Bayern Munich highlighted how much he fell from favour.
He hasn't forgotten it, either.
In 2015, Emerson advised Paul Pogba not to leave Juve for Real, according to Tuttosport (h/t Goal): "I would think twice before making the decision to leave Juventus for Madrid. It is not all gold that glitters at Real Madrid. Their fans are very demanding. They always expect a new player to make the difference."
Fast forward a year, and it was a copy-and-paste job for Emerson's quotes, with the Brazilian this time telling Alvaro Morata not to make the move, per Tuttosport (h/t FourFourTwo):
"I'd tell Morata to think twice before leaving Juventus for Real Madrid. [They're] a team that every player dreams of. I lived that dream, so I know the environment and how difficult it is to play there. This is why I tell Morata to think twice and carefully consider the situation.
"In Madrid, if you don't score for two games, you are considered unimportant, some kind of pointless extra. Morata would not be given the kind of consideration he receives at Juve."
Thankfully for Morata, he's not at all seen that way, but Emerson's time in the Spanish capital lasted a single season, and he was extremely disappointing.
5. Jerzy Dudek, 2007/08
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A golden rule of transfer work that fans tend to forget: Not every addition has to be a first XI player to be of enormous value.
Real Madrid's big success in that regard was with the addition of Polish goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek, who arrived on a free transfer in 2007, played only a dozen games in four years and retired upon leaving the club—but was widely praised by all.
Having joined from Liverpool, where he won the UEFA Champions League in 2005, Dudek was a reliable and experienced backup to Iker Casillas, mainly as a stand-in for cup games, though he also played twice in La Liga.
The second of those was his last match as a professional; he was subbed off against Almeria on the final day of the 2010/11 season and was given a guard of honour to the bench by his team-mates and an ovation by the fans.
Per the Madrid website (h/t Trevor Allen of Goal), Dudek admitted how the moment affected him: "When my team-mates and friends formed the corridor...I don't have words to describe it. Three weeks ago, I already knew I was going to play, but I didn't expect it to be so moving.
"I am very happy, and the last four years have been incredible. I have always tried to help. Time has flown by because they have been four great years."
More recently, Dudek revealed to the Liverpool Echo his role in a controversial Madrid match again Ajax in 2010, when he passed managerial instructions to team-mates Xabi Alonso and Sergio Ramos to be deliberately sent off (via the Mirror).
4. Ricardo Carvalho, 2010/11
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Jose Mourinho and Ricardo Carvalho went together like a perfect wine-and-meat combo for dinner.
At FC Porto, at Chelsea and then at Real Madrid, the duo were coach and centre-back, conductor and executor, sideline manager and on-pitch enforcer. It was inevitable that once the Portuguese head coach landed the Bernabeu job, his trusted defender would follow—but it almost happened years earlier.
After Porto won the Champions League in 2004, Mourinho went to London while Carvalho was on the verge of a move to Madrid, but the deal collapsed and his career path altered.
Sid Lowe, writing for the Guardian, reported that Madrid spendt in excess of £120 million on eight centre-backs between the time Real first failed to land Carvalho and when they eventually snared his signature in 2010.
In attempting to lure Carvalho, Mourinho called his man the best in the world, per the Daily Mail, and it initially looked good business as form and fitness posed no problem, but Carvalho's impressive debut campaign yielded only the Copa del Rey.
His final two seasons were disrupted by injury and a slide down the pecking order, and he featured in just 17 league matches across 2011/12 and 2012/13, not contributing heavily as the team won the title in the first of those seasons.
Off went Carvalho to AS Monaco, where he remained up until last summer—when he won Euro 2016 with Portugal and then signed for Shanghai SIPG.
3. Diego Lopez, 2012/13
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The most recent of Real Madrid's additions to the 30-and-over club, Diego Lopez came in midway through the 2012/13 season and was the unlikely figure who finally displaced Casillas.
Having been a youth product at Madrid, his €3.5 million move from Sevilla represented a return home for the Spanish stopper, and he was in no mood to let his second chance slip past.
Competing with the legendary San Iker can't have been easy, especially at Madrid, where reputation counts every bit as much as reality, but he wasn't shy about the competition and the tough atmosphere it generated.
"It had to do with issues on the field but off the field too," he once told Marca. "Keylor Navas arrived, and AC Milan allowed me to improve. There was a very tense atmosphere, and even though I could've stayed, it was easy to see that it was better for me to leave.
"Iker wanted to leave and Keylor arrived, so there were three 'keepers. As Iker didn't find the offer he wanted, I left."
Keylor Navas might have won the battle to be No. 1 after Lopez left for Milan in 2014, but for a year and a half, Lopez bested Casillas to be Real's starting goalkeeper—at least in La Liga, while Casillas continued in goal in European competition despite erratic form.
Lopez was good. A solid goalkeeper, not as athletic or agile as Casillas in his prime but with good handling, an aptitude in dealing with crosses and a calmness about his game; his style was perhaps what Real needed as Casillas failed to rediscover top form, and it stung Lopez that his displays were only rewarded with the exit door.
"I'm the best goalkeeper here, and you know it," he told the club directors as they prepared to sell him, according to Ben Hayward of Goal.
2. Fabio Cannavaro, 2006/07
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Having just won the World Cup with Italy, there was no chance Fabio Cannavaro would remain at Juventus after their demotion because of Calciopoli, and so he, like Emerson, made the move to the Santiago Bernabeu in 2006.
His stay lasted rather longer—three full seasons in Madrid, a regular starter in each—but he was perhaps only near the top of his game for the first two of those years.
Winning La Liga in each of his first two campaigns perhaps made up for the revoked Serie A titles, but Cannavaro's presence and ability clearly took Madrid's defensive work a step up compared to previous seasons, at least until age began to rob him of the agility needed to play against Spain's top forwards.
Fans voted Cannavaro into Real Madrid's Best Foreign XI via a Marca poll back in 2013, and he admitted on Spanish station Radio Marca (h/t Goal) that he only left the club as he was unable to be given a new deal because of time restrictions on club presidential elections—though as Madrid's slide had begun that year, perhaps he wouldn't have contributed much more in any case.
Perhaps Cannavaro's association with Real Madrid isn't quite over, however; now a manager, he told Marca in 2016 that his ambitions are to coach Italy and Los Blancos in the future (h/t Joe Wright of Goal).
1. Ruud van Nistelrooy, 2006/07
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Top of the charts is Dutch striking sensation Ruud van Nistelrooy, though once more, success is slightly tempered by what could have been.
Perhaps Madrid have been wise not to plough more funds into over-30s; Carvalho and Van Nistelrooy both suffered career-hampering injuries during their spells at the club, while Emerson's career nosedived after he left Real and Cannavaro was effectively retired a year after doing the same.
Van Nistelrooy had endured injury issues earlier in his career, but his first two years at Real Madrid highlighted just why teams would still pay big money for him.
A haul of 53 goals over the course of 2006/07 and 2007/08 propelled Real to back-to-back titles, with the first of those seasons also landing Van Nistelrooy the Pichichi Trophy, awarded to the top scorer in La Liga, for his 25 strikes. When he was handed the award, AS noted he was the first striker to be the top scorer in three different nations, having previously done so in the top flights of the Netherlands and England.
After that second season, injuries once more befell Van Nistelrooy, and his troublesome knee ensured he only had a minimal role for his final two years at Madrid, though he scored 11 times in 16 games.
He could have been a Real great. He should have won lots more, though as Sam Wallace wrote in The Independent, his time at Madrid coincided with the rise of one of the greatest teams of all time in Barcelona, who won almost everything going.
Even so, Van Nistelrooy more than made his mark at Real Madrid, and he can comfortably be labelled the best of the veteran signings the club has made over the past 20 years.
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