The proposed sale of Christiano Ronaldo from Manchester United to Real Madrid will set a new world record transfer fee only days after the sale of Brazilian Kaka from AC Milan to the Bernabeu. For Ronaldo, the move is a culmination of an ambition he has never made secret. No one was fooled for one minute at his expressed desire to remain in Manchester when a similar transfer deal from Spain failed to materialise last year.
Real Madrid’s Florentino Perez (in his second term as club president) has already delivered on his election promises by landing first Kaka, then Ronaldo, a player he said he would do ‘everything possible to land’ as Los Galacticos mount another challenge to arch-rivals Barcelona.
For Manchester United the sale represents a return on an initial investment that most fund managers would be kill their grandmother for. Sir Alex nurtured Ronaldo from the spotty, show-boating upstart into arguably one of the greatest players of his generation. The £12m it cost to bring him from Sporting Lisbon has been more than recouped as he helps Manchester United to three League titles, two Champions League victories, an FA Cup and three League Cup wins. In getting rid of him when they are, Manchester United are disposing of a player who at 24 is probably reaching the peak of his career and who would have been the cause of another unnesserary distraction over the summer as the debate about his loyalty – or not – to the Old Trafford club rages.
Whether the money will be used to purchase a replacement for the 20+ goals-a-season winger, or to service the £700m debt the club have remains unclear, but should Sir Alex be given the money, he may look to secure one or more of the players linked to the club over the last few months – Carlos Teves (long the subject of a will-he, wont-he transfer saga), Wigans’ Antonia Velez or maybe even Lyon forward Karim Benzema.
The scale of the £80m deal will no doubt send shock-waves around the world at a time when there are many clubs facing increasing pressure from banks and investors who themselves are keen to shore up their own precarious financial situation. Earlier this month auditors KPMG expressed their concern at the finances of Kop Football Holdings – the parent company which owns Liverpool FC – stating that it had “serious doubts” about the future of KFH unless outstanding loans are refinanced before the next payment to their backers is due in July.
When we put the Ronaldo transfer (or for that matter Kaka’s earlier this week) into the perspective of the current climate, eyebrows may well be raised. For example, the sum of money to be paid to Manchester United would have kept the 850 employees at LDV Vans in work, in turn saving the UK Government an additional £53m in unemployment benefit and lost taxation, not to mention the possible risk of an additional 5,000 jobs being lost in the service industries that supply LDV. It would also go a long way to clearing the combined debt of the clubs in the Scottish Premier League as they face an uncertain future with the imminent demise of Setanta. Lower down the leagues, it would save clubs like Stranraer, Stirling Albion, Clyde, Livingston and Luton, safeguarding football in these towns for years to come.
However, it would be lazy and unimaginative to pretend to be shocked at the seemingly obscene amount of money this deal (should it go through) involves. No amount of rightious indignation or moral outrage will hide the fact that this move is pure business. And football is business – big business – as the pressure to win an ever bigger share of the prize money on offer pushes clubs further and further into debt in pursuit of the ever dangling carrots on offer to the sucessful clubs.
Is Ronaldo worth £80m? Is anyone worth that much money? Well, both Manchester United and Real Madrid seem to think so, and who are we to argue. Ronaldo will earn millions for his new club in merchandising, TV and image rights, sponsorship and – lest we forget – success on the field as Los Galacticos sweep all before them. Or so they hope: Barcelona’s 6-2 demolition of Real Madrid might suggest that it’s at the back that Real should focus, but somehow a star defender does not quite have the same star-appeal as a pacy free-scoring winger.
The size of transfer fees have been causing sharp intakes of breath ever since Aston Villa paid £100 for the services of Wille Groves back in 1893 as it did when Denis Law became the UK’s first £100,000 transfer in 1961, Trevor Francis the first £1m transfer when he left Birmingham to move to Nottingham Forest, or when Alan Shearer became the UK’s first double digit transfer deal when Newcastle paid Blackburn £15m for his services. Like Moore’s Law, transfer fees will continue to rise while the clubs paying them can afford to do so.
No, the real issue with this transfer and all that follow is that it will widen the gulf between the poor, the rich, the super-rich and the obscenely wealthy clubs even further. This is already becoming more self evident with every passing season in the the so-called ‘Big Five’ leagues, i.e. the English, Spanish, Italian, German and French domestic competitions, competitions dominated by a small group of super-rich teams who face little competition from the other teams in their respective leagues.
Nowhere is this more in evidence than in Scotland. Though not part of the Big Five, Rangers and Celtic face a similar predicament. Infinitely better than the ‘also-rans’ that make up the rest of the league, both halves of the Old Firm, who between them have won the league since 1985, are keen to find a way in which they can flex their financial muscle in a setup with bigger (financial) fish to fry. Ideally this would involve a move to the English leagues, though there has also been talk of an Atlantic League with top teams from second tier leagues; perhaps not as romantic as being part of the Big Five, but there will always be more money on offer than there would be where they to continue as part of the SPL setup.
Aspirants to this financial nirvana are not short on the ground. Outside of the teams that make up the top four in the EPL, there are a slew of clubs not afraid to saddle themselves with debts, part of a calculated gamble they take in order to be part of this international jetset. And why is this so important?
Given that the rich will only get richer, and taking into consideration the sitation in which Rangers and Celtic find themselves, it’s not too far fetched to foresee a time when the top clubs in Europe will break away from their domestic leagues to form a league structure not unlike the one found in the MLS: small, self contained, without relegation or promotion, just a series of games against each other, all televised live around the world from Salford to Seoul, Barcelona to Bombay and Munich to Manila. The games would not even have to be played at Old Trafford or at the Camp Nou, because in this Orwellian scenario, your bum on their seat is no longer important: according to a report by Deloitte, in season 2007/08, the leagues which comprise the Big Five made more money from broadcast rights (and sponsorship) than they did from matchday gate receipts.
Real Madrid, and more particularly club president Perez are taking a big gamble with Ronaldo and Kaka. A collection of great players does not always make for a great team, and the previous batch of high-price talent he brought to Madrid during his last tenure as president largely failed to impress.
Whatever happens, the world of football will never be the same again.
It’s a chant often heard at football games all around the world. “The referee’s a bastard”. Or “who’se the bastard in the black”. I’ll even confess to shouting it myself a few times. Like any football fan I get frustrated – to put it mildly – whenever a referee makes a bad decision, one so blatantly wrong that you have to question the sanity, the vision and the impartiality of the man. And all this from my excellent vantage point high up in the South Stand at Pittodrie.