At current market rates, the Real Madrid roster is worth about a billion euros, or $1.5-billion. That doesn’t include any of the club’s tangible assets. That’s just the players’ transfer value.
You could sell them, recruit a dozen random guys you found hanging out in a parking lot and put the total value of the Montreal Canadiens in your pocket.
That’s not a hypothetical. That’s a suggestion. Real should do that. Start fresh.
By some measures, Real is the biggest sports club in the world. It is certainly the most recognized. There is no desolate corner of the Earth where you will not find at least one kid wearing the Real crest.
That ubiquity has been parlayed into the prestige necessary to establish sustained excellence. It’s one thing to have the money to buy the best players. Plenty of clubs do. It is another to expect the best players will always choose you. That’s real power.
That is why the past week is such a disaster for Real. We aren’t watching a formerly great team lose. We are watching a carefully curated mythology come apart at the seams.
In the space of seven days, Real has been knocked out of the Copa del Rey, lost the Spanish league and been eliminated from the Champions League at the Round of 16 stage.
The Champions League loss on Tuesday – a 4-1 demolition by Ajax of Amsterdam that occasionally viewed like a soccer skills demonstration – was the nadir.
This wasn’t David beating Goliath. It was David pantsing Goliath in front of a half-billion of Goliath’s friends.
Drowned in Their Own Blood was one headline in the Spanish press.
One commentator called it “Cristianicide” – a sweet Ronaldo reference.
“A sign of Armageddon,” another columnist wrote.
“Go out into the streets, kill your neighbours and eat their flesh,” wrote … well, okay, no one wrote that. But you’ll agree that they do get delightfully worked up about soccer in Spain.
The dramatic edge to the evening was best captured by Real’s captain, Sergio Ramos.
Ramos may be the most talented sports weasel ever. In Canadian terms, he’s Bob Probert, if Bob Probert was Bobby Orr. Though not the best of Real’s current golden generation, his unapologetic ruthlessness has defined the team.
Ramos was the man who judo-flipped Mo Salah in last year’s Champions League final, winning the game in the first 20 minutes. I’m not being literary there – the European Judo Union scolded Ramos for using dangerous “waki-gatame” technique on his opponent.
Ramos was the man who prompted Lionel Messi – usually as serene as a turnip – to frothing rage over the weekend when they met. A sneaky trip is one thing, but it was the sneaky punch in the face that got Messi’s attention.
And Ramos was also the man who sat out Tuesday’s humiliation because he had purposely sought a suspension. He wanted a clean disciplinary slate going into the quarter-final portion of the tournament, and so fouled himself out. He even admitted as much afterward, which was a tiny bit contemptuous of Ajax. Then Real got wiped out.
That was already bad. What made it much worse is that Ramos showed up Tuesday in his civvies along with a documentary crew. Amazon is making an eight-part series about his life. Cameras threw up to Ramos in a luxury box, pantomiming despair while a shooter stood three feet from him, recording.
Missing Ramos may not have altered the result, but the sight of him sitting upstairs, tending his brand while the team burns, will be the defining image of this catastrophe.
Soccer stars understand how theatre works. So in the aftermath, there was no North-American-style, “our backs are against the wall” gibberish.
“We lost it all,” fullback Dani Carvajal said, capturing the funereal mood. Then he ran off in tears.
The club’s body was quickly transported from the mixed zone to the media room so that the media could begin their autopsy.
This rot started last spring with Cristiano Ronaldo agitating for – and eventually getting – a transfer out of Spain. Which in turn led to dissent in the ranks. Which in turn led to then manager Zinédine Zidane deciding to quit.
At his going-away do, Real’s loudmouth chairman Florentino Perez described Zidane’s departure as “a sad day.”
“It’s not a sad day for me,” Zidane replied.
The good times, they were a-endin’.
Always seeking the hot thing, Real poached Julen Lopetegui from the Spanish national team to be its new coach. Unfortunately, it did it hours before the start of the World Cup. Enraged at Real’s sense of entitlement, the Spanish team fired Lopetegui immediately.
To say Lopetegui is responsible for the train wreck that followed doesn’t capture how ineffective he was. In order to wreck, a train must first leave the yard. Lopetegui managed to blow up the lead engine while turning the ignition. He lost as many games in two months (6) as Zidane managed in his first two years (7).
Lopetegui was fired, replaced by Real Madrid B manager Santiago Solari. The decline accelerated. Though Solari was only an interim replacement, he is widely expected to be sacked soon. Only Real fires its temps.
The problem runs much deeper than the bench. All of a sudden, you realize that Real isn’t all that good. Too old, too slow, too dreary. Ajax ran literal rings around it.
The usual Real template would be to turn the soil. Fire everyone; buy replacements. But it’s no longer clear that the best in the world will choose Madrid. The stench of death is about the place.
FIFA Fair Play rules now prevent a wealthy club from going truly bananas on the transfer market. Plus, Middle East oil money pays a better wage in places such as Paris and Manchester.
In the short term, it’s more likely that Real will slowly bleed out, allow some of its stars to leave so that it can rid itself of dissenters and find some balance.
It goes to show – there is no such thing as patenting the winning formula in sports. Eventually, the ground shifts under everyone, no matter how steady they look. That chaos is the only thing that can be guaranteed.