Real Madrid's $400 million gamble

By Sid Lowe, Special to SI.com, World Soccer

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Real Madrid bought World Player of the Year Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United for a world-record transfer fee of $131 million. Denis Doyle/Getty Images

Return of the Galácticos. Galácticos Strike Back. Revenge of the Galácticos. Galácticos Part Deux.

Call it what you like, they're back. Bigger, better and brasher than before. Glitzier and more glamorous than you could ever imagine. This is the sequel to end all sequels, a huge summer blockbuster and another taste of Hollywood for the club that one player described as having embarked on a process of "Disneyfication."

Even the club's own sporting director has likened this latest production to a film and insisted, with such huge names in the lead roles, that it's guaranteed to be a box-office smash. Whether it will actually be any good is another matter entirely, of course.

The return of Florentino Pérez to the Santiago Bernabéu presidency signals the return of the world's most lavish players to the Santiago Bernabéu pitch. Unopposed, Pérez walked back into Real Madrid for the second time, having walked away in February 2006. His feet barely under the desk, he completed the signing of Kaká; less than four days later Cristiano Ronaldo arrived, too.

Anyone who doubted that Pérez's return would mean a return to the policy he pursued last time around immediately saw the error of their ways. Under the man Emilio Butragueño once cringingly called "a superior being," there would be a second coming after all.

Most expensive ever

Pérez's Madrid has now boasted six European Footballers of the Year. He has bought them all. Not one of them won the award for his performances at Real Madrid. It is as if France Football, the magazine that awards the Ballon d'Or, does Madrid's scouting. Well, France Football and Hello!, as Pérez also bought David Beckham -- the only one of his first five signings not to have won the award. Madrid now boasts the four most expensive signings ever in Luís Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Kaká and Ronaldo.

Last time Pérez was president, he bought a Galáctico each summer: Figo in 2000, Zidane in '01, Ronaldo in '03, Beckham in '04 and Michael Owen in '05. Owen might have been described by one columnist as a "plastic galactic," but he still turned up with a Ballon d'Or under his arm and the keys to the British market -- one Pérez especially covets. Then there was Brazilian star Robinho, the man who was dubbed "the new Pelé" and the one player who was supposed to win the award while at Madrid, but didn't.

Adding a big name to the cast every year was an obsession. If Real Madrid was a film, it was a footballing Ocean's Eleven, signing up a new star and getting a bit bigger (if not actually any better) every year. Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen ... this time, Pérez has jumped straight to Ocean's Sixteen. "We will have to do in one year what we would normally do in three," he declared.

Four days and two world-record transfers later, he was as good as his word. This Madrid was on course to be even more galactic than the Galácticos. Everyone had got used to long summer soap operas, but this time the biggest deals were over in a flash -- like a Galáctico drive-thru.

The announcement of the latest acquisition was short and to the point, a statement reading: "Real Madrid confirms that we have made an offer to Manchester United for acquisition of the playing rights of Cristiano Ronaldo. The club hopes to reach an agreement with the player in the next few days." They didn't need to say much because everyone else would say it for them. It was headline news all over the world.

"You can tell how big this is by the fact that even we are talking about it, when normally soccer isn't our thing," said the presenter on ESPN, going coast-to-coast in the U.S. In the middle of the NBA Finals, it was the lead story. It was everyone's lead story.

Pérez had fulfilled his first objective, one that defines the Galácticos project. Barely days after Barcelona had completed a historic treble -- never before achieved by a Spanish club -- the world's gaze was firmly set on Real Madrid instead. Pérez's obsession was with returning Real Madrid to center stage and, suddenly, that is exactly where it was. Together, Kaká and Ronaldo immediately brought Madrid the one thing Pérez craves more than anything for his club: attention.

The cost was $223 million. That's just in fees. It will cost $32 million a year to pay them, making some $406 million in total. And still Madrid wants more. Pérez's appetite is voracious and new director general Jorge Valdano has admitted that it wanted "four or five more." (Real also has signed defender Raúl Albiol from Valencia and striker Karim Benzema from Lyon for a total of as much as $88 million.)

The Catalan press denounced the Ronaldo deal as immoral and scandalous, the moral high ground adopted with unrealistic and opportunistic relish. Barcelona President Joan Laporta lost his cool and railed against it. Pérez had won a second prize already: Treble-winner Barcelona was running scared.

Everyone was asking the same question. Well, everyone outside Madrid, anyway. In the Spanish capital -- to start with, at least -- no one cared, they were far too excited. But everyone else was asking: How on earth can Madrid afford it?

Sure, Ramón Calderón had claimed to have left $126 million in the club's coffers. OK, so Madrid was hopeful of recovering $138 million on as many as nine players it was hoping to offload. But how many people really believed Calderón? And as Valdano himself added: "People don't leave Madrid easily." Besides, that money hadn't yet come in and it still didn't cover Madrid's projected spending. Worse, it was in debt to the tune of almost $811 million, according to one academic report.