Has the bubble burst for Real Madrid and prize asset Ronaldo?
They lag 19 points behind arch-rivals Barcelona and are failing to attract new galacticos to the club. After three Champions League crowns in four years, the party may finally be over
If your portfolio of endorsements includes a fragrance, a hotel, a shampoo, headphones, kids’ clothing for fathers who want their sons to dress the same as them, an Egyptian steel company and a pair of gold Nike Mercurials that might as well be made of gold, it is no surprise to the rest of us that money matters.
For Cristiano Ronaldo, it must have become a way of life now, every day beginning with a fresh pair of trainers straight out of the box, the photo-shoots and the ruminations on the importance of environmentally sound infrastructure projects in the heart of Cairo. As when David Beckham embarked on a solo tour of selected Asian countries in the summer of 2003, unrelated to any activity involving 11-a-side professional football matches, Ronaldo is literally getting paid to be Ronaldo.
He has that market sewn up, including the one for the Japanese stomach thing that produces Ronaldo-style abs for those who prefer Crunchies to crunches. That particular CR7 dream is very much available to all – £149.99 including delivery – and who can blame him for acquiescing to all those marketing men who could not think of a better idea. It is certainly an easier deal than the chief revenue stream of the CR7 empire, that being a new Real Madrid contract.
Lionel Messi’s new €100milliona-year (£88million) Barcelona contract, finally signed in November, inevitably triggered another escalation in the great cold war between him and Ronaldo. As their respective goal tallies spiralled, as both passiveaggressively refused to vote for the other in the Ballon d’or poll, so the one obvious yardstick became money, except that there will be no new contract for Ronaldo, who signed his last big deal in November 2016.
It was a whopping £44million a year, in a country where youth unemployment is 38 per cent, but if you happen to be the only person on earth who measures his self-worth against the silent, bearded genius at Barcelona, even £22million net can feel like a drawer-full of old pesetas.
Ronaldo, 32, is contracted until 2021, and the consensus is that he may serve about two years before, most likely, heading off to Major League Soccer to assume the penalty and free-kick duties at whatever beachfront franchise takes his fancy. He will leave an immense legacy, and a generation of Real Madrid footballers trying to get close to his achievements will live in his shadow.
It asks a key question of the club, which goes beyond their struggles in La Liga at the moment, lagging 19 points behind Barcelona. The latest suggestions, that Ronaldo is so unhappy at the Messi contract disparity that he wants to leave, poses the question of where Madrid are heading after a glittering era which might yet culminate in a fourth Champions League in five years in May.
Their stadium redevelopment, planned to be completed by 2015, is on hold with the Abu Dhabi naming rights deal seemingly now lost and two European Commission state aid decisions adopted against the club in July 2016. The new adidas kit deal to match Manchester United’s current one has not yet materialised, and historically the uplift was negotiated on the back of a major signing, the last of which was Gareth Bale in 2013. The accounts for 2016-2017 were mediocre, with a profit of
£18 million, down from
£27 million the year before and £37 million for the 2014-2015 season, although the club’s transfer dealings have consistently left them in the black. Yet a club who have historically put their profits to work, taking others’ best players, are currently sitting on cash reserves of £157million, with no clear reason why.
The acquisition of young talents such as Marco Asensio, Theo Hernandez and Dani Ceballos was portrayed as a masterstroke until this season, as the team have struggled to cope. Real failed to sign Paul Pogba in 2016 and then Kylian Mbappe in the face of relentless competition from wealthy rivals. Instead they have offloaded second-string talent such as Alvaro Morata, Danilo and Rodriguez, while securing first-team players such as Bale, Toni Kroos, Luka Modric and Ronaldo to new deals.
The transfer market has upscaled beyond recognition since Madrid signed Bale, but so too has the political situation that made the deal possible. As the leaking of Bale’s contract two years ago revealed, four Spanish banks, not named definitively, but thought to be Banksia, BBVA, Santander and Popular, signed promissory notes effectively to guarantee the final three instalments of the transfer fee – a total of around £60 million.
It is doubtful whether the same banks would be able to do so again. It is against this backdrop they approach the summer eager to assert themselves in the market for a leading player and perhaps even a leading manager – armed with their usual certainty that Real is the final square on the board where every player wants to end up.
Replacing Ronaldo is an impossible task, from which his former club Manchester United never truly recovered, and one which Madrid must undertake in a very different financial climate. They cannot justify a new contract for him in this, the latterstage Ronaldo era, when the goal machine has arguably never been so interesting to watch, a great footballer battling time and age and the absurdly high standards set by his younger self.