“The Hunter” Strikes back at Real
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar who moved from Real Madrid to AC Milan earlier this summer has lashed out against his treatment at the club. He made it a point to say that he has nothing but love and gratitude for the fans at the Bernabeú, but that his problem was with the club brass. He feels that he was only used for the first couple of months and then pushed into the background and ignored.
I cannot blame the Dutchman for his feelings. He was one of three Real Madrid signings last season that I never saw making much sense. Huntelaar, along with Frechmen Julien Faubert and Lassana Diarra were all purchased last season during the mid-season transfer window. Lass is the only one that ever seemed to make much of his time, and he has worked his way into the starting XI during much of this preseason, something that will surely change as the new signings settle in at Madrid. Still, he has proven that he will be a more than adequate second stringer, while Huntelaar and Faubert never really made an impression. Quite honestly the latter two players were never going to see greatness at the club. They were in a sense emergency economic buys, but the fees paid in each case were far more than either player was worth to the club, a fact signified by Madrid’s acceptance of a fee €12 million less than what they originally paid.
Madrid Transfers
Even after Florentino Perez and Manuel Pellegrini have both stated their desire to end the preseason spending spree, Marca.com reports that Real may still be trying to acquire the services of Bayern Munich’s French playmaker Franck Ribéry. The Spanish media claim that Bayern skipper Louis Van Gaal may be venerable to something other than money. It is believed that the Dutch coach is keen on signing his own countrymen. According to Marca, Madrid may be planning to use this as a way of wrangling Ribéry away from the Bavarian side in exchange for cash as well as Real’s surplus Dutch players, namely Arjen Robben, Wesley Sneijder, and possibly even Rafael Van der Vaart.
Meanwhile, Van der Vaart’s attorneys argue that since the player was not given a jersey number this season, Madrid has breached the contract with the player, which would allow him to move to any team without the consent and without the new team paying Real Madrid. This has not yet been confirmed.
While Madrid’s want to move players out and their former interest in bringing Ribéry in are both well known, I’m not sure that there is too much to this story. It would be a nightmare to have a midfield full of all-stars, especially when this amounts to the exclusion of Guti, a fan favorite and academy player. With just over two weeks to play I think it would be very bad to force Pellegrini to readjust his style, depth chart and the way he manages the team. Not to mention, that would be just one more ego for him to manage; a situation reminiscent of the one that brought the Cincinnati Reds of the 1990’s to their knees after a World Series title.
Barcelona Transfers
For all their bashing of Real Madrid’s buying tactics, Barcelona has not gone through the preseason without their fair share of superstar-caliber player signings. The first to come to mind is Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who was brought to the Catalan side from Inter Milan in exchange for Samuel Eto’o and a fee of €45 million. They have also signed Brazilian star Maxwell
Their next target seems to be Arsenal’s Spanish midfielder and captain Cesc Fabregas. Barcelona have made an offer of €30 million for the player, which is some way short of the €45 million price tag Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has put on the player. Fabregas would be just the latest of many stars to leave the Emirates Stadium this summer, where Arsenal have fallen victim to among other things the spending spree of Manchester City. The situation is made more intense by the fact that if Barcelona are to acquire the player, they will need to seal a deal in time to keep him out of Arsenal’s Champions League Playoff Round clash against Celtic, which would make the Spaniard ineligible to play for any other team in the Champions League this season.
Why Madrid Deserves to Buy Players
Barcelona press has made much of stating that none of the money paid this summer for players went into debt, but was paid by the club without the loan of a larger bank. This is true, but when compared to Real Madrid, Barcelona simply is not as loan-worthy as its capitol city foes. Now don’t get me wrong, Barcelona’s preached philosophy of growing players as opposed to buying them had great merit, but one has to wonder how much of that is choice and how much is necessity. In the 2008-2009 season, one that saw FC Barcelona win the Copa del Rey, La Liga, and the Champions League, they still could not keep up financially with Real Madrid. Even in La Liga, where Barcelona was always breaking records throughout the season, they only managed to come in second in attendance with 1,312,543 fans. Madrid, who began the season dismally, then survived injury, then made a phenomenal run after the holiday break just to collapse after a 6-2 thrashing at the hands of archrival Barça, finished in first place with 1,364,000 fans in attendance for the year. All this considering that Barcelona’s Camp Nou holds 98,000 spectators, 23,000 more than Madrid’s 75,000 seat Santiago Bernabeú.
Real Madrid is simply more profitable by far than Barcelona, and to those who would deny them or the Manchester United’s and Chelsea’s of the world the right to use what they have earned over the past hundred-plus years (a number that appears to include Michel Platini, head of UEFA) cannot, in my mind, justify their elimination of all the successful history and tradition of the world’s biggest clubs from the modern game without committing an insult to the game itself.
Santiago Bernablog- Home of My Real Madrid Page 