East Carolinian

Issue date: 6/17/09 Section: Sports

Media Credit: AP

Media Credit: AP

Last week, Spanish football club, Real Madrid, splashed out enough cash on two soccer players to buy a mid-level baseball franchise.

First, they signed Brazilian playmaker Kaka from AC Milan for a record transfer fee of 65 million Euros, or about $90 million. Then the next day, paid Manchester United 80 million British Pounds, or about $130 million for reigning World and European Player of the Year Cristiano Ronaldo.

To grasp how much they are actually spending, it's important to realize that European sports don't operate the same way that they do in the U.S.

First off, there are no salary caps -- if you have the money, you can spend it. This includes ownership as well, so it's not just about how much the club makes. If an insanely wealthy benefactor buys a club and wants to spend their own personal wealth on players, coaches and stadiums, they are well within their rights to do so.

It's also important to remember that players don't move from team to team the same way as in the U.S.

Trades and free agency is the main avenue for team-to-team movement here, but the rest of the world works mainly on buy-and-sell principles.

Because players are often moving from country to country as opposed to city to city, and with the various work permit requirements, foreign player allotments, and other regulations that differ from country to country, it's just easier to sell the rights to your player than to work out trades. A similar system is used when a Major League Baseball teams wants to sign a player from a team in Japan, as the Red Sox did with Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2007.

However, the catch with these transfers is that the team isn't buying the players contract from the other team; they are essentially buying it out.

Teams then have to negotiate their own contract with the player. Which, if we are to believe the reports coming out of Spain, could cost Madrid an extra 15-20 million Euros a year for each player. But spending exorbitant amounts of money on the best players in the world is nothing new for Real Madrid and club president Florentino Perez.

Starting with his election as club president in 2000, Perez set record after record in the transfer market while building a squad that came to be known as Los Galacticos (The Superstars) in an attempt to make Real Madrid the most popular soccer brand name in the world.

In 2000, he bought Luis Figo from rival Barcelona for a then world record 37 million British Pounds. This was seen as big betrayal to the Barcelona faithful, which felt he left just for the money. And upon his return to the Nou Camp (Barcelona's home stadium) fans literally threw money at him when he took corner kicks.

The following year, Perez set the mark even higher when he lured Zinedine Zidane away from Italian club Juventus for 46 million BP. He continued the policy by signing Brazilian striker Ronaldo in 2002 for 26 million BP and David Beckham in 2003 for 25 million BP.

However, while Perez succeeded in making Madrid the richest club in the world (though they have since been surpassed by Manchester United), their performance on the field did not reflect the star power in their line-up.

After the signing of Beckham, Madrid failed to win a trophy until they topped Barcelona for the Spanish Premira league crown in Beckham's final year with the team in 2006-07, when most of the Galacticos had moved on.

This is something Madrid fans should be wary of with a team already possessing a number of talented attacking players.

Finding enough places in the squad to accommodate such stars is recipe for disaster. As well as finding a system to accommodate each player's particular skills, they may have to start playing games with two balls on the field to keep everyone happy.

It is also rumored that Madrid is in talks with the cash-strapped, Spanish club Valencia to bring their prolific striker David Villa to the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu (Real Madrid's stadium) for a reported 46 million Euros.

And while having a lot of offensive weapons is a nice problem to have, Madrid's main problem last season was keeping goals out of their own net; the same problem that doomed the previous Galacticos era.

But, only time will tell if this round of record signings produces more than just a higher number of jersey sales.

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