There appears no stopping the big clubs splashing out like there's no tomorrow. JAMIE JACKSONreports
THESE ARE recessionary times, but no one in charge of the wallets at Europe’s footballing behemoths will take heed this summer. The coming weeks promise the greatest splash of the game’s apparently endless reserves of transfer cash since the sport began. It also means that fans everywhere are in for some ride once the continent’s leagues kick-off again in August.
The Premier League circus will have a Manchester United team that may offer supporters a forward line of Franck Ribery, Karim Benzema, Antonio Valencia and Wayne Rooney to help them forget a certain 24-year-old Portuguese winger.
Manchester City, their fierce rivals whose lightning-quick €14 million acquisition of Gareth Barry 10 days ago was a telling marker, could have Carlos Tevez, Samuel Eto’o and Robinho as their Three Amigos, courtesy of their sheikh’s riches.
And Chelsea, bankrolled by their Russian billionaire, are fighting to land, among others, Atletico Madrid’s Sergio Aguero and Alexandre Pato from Milan for around €53 million apiece.
Over in Spain, meanwhile, it is galactico redux time at Real Madrid. Their frontline will read Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo and AN Other, most probably David Villa of Valencia – at a total cost of close to €205 million.
Florentino Perez, the Madrid president and founder of the galactico concept, claims he has €352 million to spend this summer, so he still has at least €70 million with which to gazump United and steal Bayern Munich’s Ribery or Benzema from Lyon.
The week that football will never forget began on Monday with the €66 million transfer of Kaka from Milan to Madrid. It took precisely three days for excitement over the former world player of the year’s move to become passe, once United announced the acceptance of a world-record €94 million bid from Real for Ronaldo.
Yet what is remarkable about this pecuniary incontinence from Real is that, in what are well-documented hard times, the club also has debts of €580 million.
Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Barcelona’s economic director, voiced football’s most often asked and pertinent question when he wailed: “How can a football club have so much money bearing in mind the current economic situation and the politics of credit restriction in all banks?”
Perez has a long and short answer. “Shirt sales will fund the deal,” is the succinct one, which suggests a staggering number of Kaka and Ronaldo replica tops will have to be shifted. His more prosaic explanation, meanwhile, goes: “We can improve our accounts by aiming for three goals – increasing ticket sales, bank loans, and the club’s economic value.”
Madrid certainly have two advantages that, say, United, Bayern or Milan do not: government backing and lucrative membership schemes. “I was sat with senior figures at Barcelona three years ago and they were very unhappy with the whole galacticos mark one era,” says Simon Chadwick, professor of sports business strategy and marketing at Coventry University.
“That basically came about because of the property deal in which Perez sold the central Madrid training ground (in 2001 for around €241 million) and used the money to build the new site near the airport. The deal was artificially handled by the local government.
“There are now two big towers where the old training ground was – this is prime estate and the state clearly had a role in that. And they have 88,000 members who pay €115 a year (€10.1 million in total) – that’s a big chunk of money United or Milan do not have.”
Chadwick adds that Madrid must have borrowed greatly against future projected income.
Where, then, does this all leave Alex Ferguson as he plots how to replace Ronaldo by spending the minimum of €117 million he has to throw at the problem? Part of the conundrum is that rivals now know exactly how much they can stretch United’s largesse in the market.
Crazy seems a fitting title for football’s latest chapter – one that has only just begun. Last summer a record €587 million went on transfers in the Premier League, while an equally astronomical €4.81 billion was paid to the players who entertain each week in Europe’s big five leagues.
Expect even these figures to appear quaint once the transfer window shuts on September 1st.
