There are vials of ink waiting to be spilled on the insane apotheosis underway at Real Madrid, who have just been given permission to spend a record-annihilating £80 million on Cristiano Ronaldo after buying Kaká for a merely record-shattering £56 million last week. You could write on the return of Florentino Pérez and the apparently unabashed resurrection of the Galacticos idea; you could write on the way these moves have peeled the eggshell off the myth of English financial dominance and swallowed the contents whole; you could write on the deranged logic of building a team around two players who temperamentally and stylistically seem to cancel each other out, then handing it over to a manager with no experience coaching superstars. You could write on the way in which this is the legacy of this year’s Barcelona team—to have provoked Madrid into overreacting, convulsively, with the only tools they know, like a giant taunted until it puts its foot through the church.
But for now, given the impossibility of seeing the future (Ronaldo and Kaká could be brilliant together, as hard as that is to imagine now) and the sense that we’re still in the outer rings of what’s about to become a very tight and very terrifying spiral, I think all we can say is what Paul Wilson said in the Guardian Sport Blog this morning, with understatement that just about catches the right tone:
one suspects if things ever start to go wrong they could go wrong quite badly.
And maybe this, from Spenser:
With that all mad and furious he grew,
Like a fell mastiffe through enraging heat,
And curst, and band, and blasphemies forth threw,
Against his Gods, and fire to them did threat,
And hell vnto him selfe with horrour great.
Thenceforth he car’d no more, which way he strooke,
Nor where it light, but gan to chaufe and sweat,
And gnasht his teeth, and his head at him shooke,
And sternely him beheld with grim and ghastly looke.
Oh, and this:
Read More: Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaká, Real Madrid
by Brian Phillips · June 11, 2009
For the first, and hopefully only time in my life, I will quote Didier Drogba: “It’s a disgrace.”
at least they got it over with, so we won’t have to hear speculation and rumors all summer
Absolutely. It could have been so much worse.
“temperamentally and stylistically seem to cancel each other out” — how can two players on the same team cancel each other? are u an ignorant cricket fan writing nonsence for English-biased fans to read? Real have purchased him on merit and their own money unlike Chelsea or Man City.
their styles of play are conflicting
hence, “stylistically”
Does the Ronaldo purchase and the Setanta collapse signal the end of EPL dominance?
More importantly, can ESPN please please buy the CL rights at a discount?
Poms from England better get used to Spanish dominance.. Both Spain and their club Barca r European champions and soon to b World Champions.. La Liga is far superior than EPL and now has the 5 best players in the world too there…
Y guys will have to make do with beating Andorra..
Another WC exit on penalties in the QF anyone.. ????
You could write a sort of horror story- a football club driven by some pathological desire to collect the worlds elite attacking players- and they won’t stop until there aren’t any left….
I’m dreading to see how this ends, it shouldn’t be possible. The only bright spot is Man City’s sheiks looking on in envy- they only wish it could be like this.
@Elliot: I don’t think the Ronaldo purchase would have much to do with it. If anything, this is a good move for ManUnited. $131 mil can buy you a lot of talent. We’ll have to see how much of that goes to the bank to pay of some debt, and how much goes for Ribery.
As a Barca supporter, this doesnt scare me a bit. Madrid need to be concentrating on the defense, and find replacements for Gago, Cannavaro, and Heinze. Come to think of it, thats what Barcelona need to focus on as well.
Oh well, should be an interesting season. I hope Asnejo does well and can make Atleti a player, and really hope Valencia doesn’t implode like everyone is expecting. Come 10 weeks in, La Liga 09-10 could easily be a two horse race.
Why does it always have to devolve into England vs. Spain??
Brian, you are an ignorant cricket fan! I knew it! English-biased even. Strange, since you are in the wrong hemisphere for that. I think it is time for you to hurl your own spells of vengeance!
In other news, La Liga still isn’t that great. It would be great if this WAS some sort of signal of another league matching England’s quality. I don’t know why everyone makes such a fuss about it. More competition = more fun, ideally. It would be sort of nice to see Madrid actually put up a decent CL challenge.
If you haven’t seen me around, it’s because I am leading my Exeter City team through League 1 with mixed results. FM is painfully addictive. I now understand why Ferguson never smiles.