Cristiano Ronaldo: a Sensible Signing?

My last blog was on “the recession and ticket prices”, but when you see the news today that Real Madrid have launched an £80M bid for Cristiano Ronaldo, this following a £56M transfer was confirmed just a matter of days ago for former Man City target kaka, you have to wonder if there is an economic crisis at all.
Well of course there is - Palace can barely spend 80 quid on a player right now, and indeed even to Man United, 80 million is an awful lot of money – and it will allow them to more than likely sign Tevez permanently, a well as getting in several other players – Ribery and Benzema seem quite likely – although given the prices some of the paper have been quoting this morning for the duo, perhaps even £80 million won’t cover the cost of buying the two.
It’s never wise to have players that don’t want to play for you – and I think Sir Alex has got this one right. Ronaldo quite clearly wants to leave, and for that sort of price it would have been stupid to say no.
But does the deal suit Madrid? A silly question you might ask – he is after all one of the best players in the world, but are more and more attacking players what they really need right now? In his last reign, Perez introduced the “Galactico” idea – bringing in players such as Beckham, Figo, Zidane and Owen. The similarity between these players? They are all extremely attack minded. Indeed the only really defensive “Galactico” of sorts was Roberto Carlos, which says an awful lot about his transfer policy. Any team that has been successful in recent season have based their squad on a solid defence. Man united would have gotten nowhere without the Vidic/Ferdinand combination, and although the defence is Barcelona’s weakness, it’s still very good. As an example, Man United won 9 Premiership games last season 1 – 0, and remarkably kept 25 clean sheets, and indeed even though they did end up conceding the same amount of goals as Chelsea, a lot of those were in games towards the end of the season where the title was virtually won anyway.
Ok they’ll get a huge increase of revenue in terms of shirt sales, but £80M is still an awful lot of money to pay for player who may well have already reached his peak or at least will it very soon. He bases his entire game on quick skills and pace – will he be able to adapt, as someone like Ryan Giggs has, when he gets older? I do think it’s a bit of a risk.
Another argument is the fact that the £60M spent on Ronaldo could have been spent on much younger players, such as Luc Castaignos, a 16 year old player who Arsenal are reportedly after for £4M. Yes he could turn out to be rubbish, but he could be the news Henry – and with Wenger’s eye for spotting a talent, you’d be a fool to doubt him. A further example of this is Kaka himself who cost just 8.5M when joining Milan in the first palace – I know it’s not Madrid, or Perez’s policy, but surely it would be more sensible for them to spend at least some of their money on highly rated cheaper players (e.g. at a higher risk), rather than spending ridiculous amounts on players like Ronaldo. How many players like Ronaldo or Kaka can they afford anyway? And they certainly need a lot of strengthening, if they’re to be competitive both in their own league, and perhaps more importantly, in the Champions league.
Of course he’s a great player, but great payers don’t necessarily make a good team. Perez made two mistakes during his last reign as president- buying individual players thus not forming a team, and focusing solely on attack minded players. Yes it’s great to watch, and yes it’ll get them a hell of a lot of revenue thought the added interest they will get from the media/fans etc, but attacking football, unless it’s built on a solid defensive foundation, is very rarely winning football – and I don’t think Perez has learnt that yet, even after his previous spell in charge.