Return to Galacticos model changes Real for the worse

Florentino Perez may have been keen to grandstand at Real Madrid’s general assembly on Sunday, but some of his stars have been more concerned with just standing still. Almost literally.

- MIGUEL DELANEY

One player recently complained to friends and anyone else who would listen – that the forward line does not run enough. It is not just one star’s gripe, either.

You only have to watch some of the matches. Madrid don’t look as finely honed as in recent seasons.

It’s not difficult to see what has changed. Kylian Mbappe has been signed on a wage befitting his status as one of the best in the world. This is the kind of star that Perez has long felt defined Madrid, and his staff have worked hard to get them back to that level over a difficult half-decade in financial terms. The recent Champions League victories were a product of compromise rather than complete power. Madrid had been forensically studious about every signing, ensuring each fit into a 10-year plan.

No more. They’re back to the biggest. That fits with the bombast at the general assembly, where Perez evidently felt so confident in his current position that he took aim at Uefa and putative allies in Fifa over the calendar, reasserted the future of the Super League, and even began moves to alter Madrid’s member-owned structure. The latter would be a landmark moment for football, and push the club into a new era. The wonder is whether some of this also brings everything full circle, and back to the first time Perez enjoyed such power.

That was in the summer of 2003 when the first Galactico model had been so commercially successful that the president decided to go even further. He insisted on signing the game’s most commercial player, David Beckham.

It made financial sense but didn’t make football sense. There was no obvious place for Beckham, as illustrated by how his arrival necessitated the sale of crucial defensive midfielder Claude Makelele. A team full of self-assured stars lost their centre of gravity and collapsed, winning nothing for four years.