well, i guess it was inevitable really. the ego wouldn't allow ronaldo to stay at manchester united, especially when they were merely the second best team in the world, especially when the bright lights and glittering history of madrid came into view. and regardless, the inevitability was alledgely contractually bound: a pre-contract agreement between ramon calderon's bumbling adminstration and ronaldo, with a fixed penalty clause of something in the region of £26m if the portuguese was not signed, seemed to force perez's hand; it would appear that the agreement was in fact between united and real as well, and that perez was trying, to no avail, to reduce that fee. the june 30 deadline mentioned by united may well be the contractually mandated one, but really this isn't important beyond the intriguing political aspect - ronaldo is finally madrid bound. and it has massive implications in four areas, both to the involved clubs, the player and football's finances.
for united, i cannot decide whether this is a good or a bad thing. whilst the man was possibly the most complete attacker imaginable, combining power, pace, acceleration, strength, confidence, technique, finishing, instinct, delivery & movement into one unstoppable package, he was far from the complete footballer. he lacked workrate and commitment, and actually unbalanced the united team by requiring others to do his running for him; the main reason berbatov didn't fit in was because it added a little too much lethargy to the united attack and necessitated the removal of one of the energiser bunnies (either tevez or park) from the starting xi. also, whilst he frequently supplied moments of
frankly ludicrous quality that are possibly beyond any other player in the world, he was also frequently the type of player who would provide the flashes of ability without ever taking over a game - a finisher of moves rather than the instigator, not always the constant, dazzling influence of, for example, messi. and whilst united were a startlingly effective footballing machine during the last two seasons,
destroying lesser foes, but never really possessing a real footballing eloquence that defined their opponents in the champions league final. ronaldo was the ultimate asset for what was ultimately a defensive juggernaut, snatching vital goals and terrorising teams on the break (alongside the rest of the dynamic attack), but you cannot say that his departure will destroy a truly fluent offensive unit.
in fact, ronaldo's departure potentially opens up new possibilities for united. if a more diligent, visionary passer can replace him, united are well set - they won't have to compromise with a hard-working but limited player on the flank, and they can play more through berbatov rather than around him. in terms of ready made replacements, ribery would be ideal i think - a player who sits deeper and is more influential, but who scores goals and can beat people with the dribble; he would also be comfortable and dangerous even when stationed out wide, a refreshing change from ronaldo's gradual transmogrification into a central beyond that, it would just be quite interesting for them to go after benzema, even if he's more of an out and out striker, or potentially david silva or kun aguero, although the latter two aren't physically ready and united need someone who can step in right away.
at the time of writing, it looks like the first player in will be luis valencia from wigan; at £17m he would be overpriced, but i can imagine him offering a great deal more than nani as that first change wideman from the bench. similarly intriguing as depth would be arjen robben, who at around £7-10m may be the biggest bargain in world football (even if he is rather unpleasant and, like ronaldo, absolutely refuses to track back). carlos tevez, on the other hand, would be an absolute mistake. his talent and value isn't dependent on the other players in united's squad, and ronaldo leaving doesn't make him any more worth £25m.
meanwhile, that £80m also allows united the chance of recruiting another midfield holding player as insurance in the event that owen hargreaves isn't able to resume his career; without the englishman, they're only really left with one disruptive midfielder in the squad (fletcher) and we saw how that worked out in rome.
so, united actually have a chance to get better. they can parse their most disruptive locker-room influence, breaking with a player who by turns both limited & fulfilled them, and achieving greater depth across their squad. they can certainly emerge as a better football team.
for ronaldo, i think there is genuine danger in this move. this is a lazy player with a bad attitude, moving from a footballing culture where structure and work and discipline are emphasised far more than at real. as united have demonstrated, top-level football today requires a combination of graft and ability up front like never before, where a lack of appropriate balance between players who are willing to press and close down and those that aren't is to the significant detriment of your team (one only needs to look at the effectiveness of barca's front three at pressurising the opposition to assauge any doubts). now, this is a clear evolution of football since the last galactico era, and indulging lazy footballers is a recipe for disaster, especially in european competition. as such, adding kaka and ronaldo is potentially destructive: although one may need to play out wide to accomodate the other, and we know that isn't ronaldo's ideal position these days, the real danger is that teams will find it too easy to outmanoeuvre real defensive "shape".
in short, real might not be as good as it appears, especially given that they still have a whole host of ineffectual midfielders, one centre-back of any repute (who also happens to be mental), no left-back and little cover elsewhere. and you can imagine that ronaldo, a primadonna at the best of times, may not find himself as happy as he was in the successful united side.
for real, apart from the above problems, face an issue of mounting debt. for all of perez's celebratory nonsense, every proclamation that the "most expensive things are also the cheapest", one cannot imagine how real can genuinely afford these players. perez actually alluded to this when he said that the arrival of these players improve's madrid's finances by
"increasing ticket sales, increasing bank loans and increasing the club's economic value". so he's decreasing debt by increasing debt?
the point is a simple one: madrid have something in the region of €500m debt, which can only have increased during the calderon years as the incompetent former president spent the best part of €300m on a swathe of mediocrity. and this is despite real's last debt crisis being sorted out in the early perez years by a sweetheart deal to sell off the training ground for somewhere around €400m (helped, but not, as popular preconceptions have it, bought by the government). so what does this suggest? that the €300-350m in revenue made by real a year isn't enough to finance even €100m's worth of players a season. real may boast about that revenue figure - deloitte put them top of the worldwide money league - but obviously revenue is a fairly useless figure when out of context, as it doesn't account for outgoings. and clearly, a club of madrid's size has some fairly significant outgoings, with probably at least 50% of turnover going on wages (
chelsea spend something like €200m on wages a year, united €140m, so it is likely that real are at least at that level), with agents fees and transfer spending accounting for a whole lot more.
so, essentially, there is no way that real have the capital reserves to purchase these players outright: their arrival will necessitate further loans and further debt being heaped onto the already sizeable pile. obviously, given the financial climate real have access to a remarkably easy line of credit, seemingly this time from the catalan bank la caixa, and for all michel platini's moaning about british football debt it is surely a bigger problem that spanish clubs are allowed to rack up debt with such impunity due to a deep-rooted lack of oversight and regulation. this strikes me as reasonably outrageous.
finally, this is dangerous for football, inflating the market at a time when revenues are more at risk than ever before. two years ago, franck ribery was worth £18m (one of the great transfer coups of our time, bayern should be both eternally proud & grateful: proud of their own nous and grateful that everyone else at the time was willing to let an already-superb player go to the bundesliga for under his market value) and now, with the money injected by real and the inflationary posturing of manchester city, he is priced at £65m. ridiculous, of course, but you can hardly blame bayern for turning round to potential suitors and simply pointing to the fees paid for both ronaldo and kaka; they, like manchester united, certainly do not have any financial imperative to sell (in fact, they have a more pressing need to get rid of the obscenely overpaid luca toni as first priority) and can name their price. it is incredibly worrying.
so, we shall see what comes of this. i think it actually presents united with the opportunity to improve, strangely enough, whilst real & ronaldo need to be wary of overconfidence. the whole football world, though, needs to be wary of taking that final step into the abyss.
