Florentino Perez had a satisfied smile on his face, and with good reason. He had just watched Spain and Brazil share a thrilling, freely drawn tie in the expensively, lavishly reappointed stadium. Now Perez, the all-powerful president of Real Madrid, has found himself in a whitewashed tunnel, presenting – quite by accident, apparently – his favorite photo opportunity.
On one side stood Vinícius Júnior, Real Madrid’s flag bearer and main fixture, dutifully introducing the man who pays his wages to his Brazil teammates. A little further along the corridor, hurrying to bow, was Rodrigo, another of Perez’s employees.
But Perez’s focus has been on Edric, the 17-year-old star-in-waiting who will complete his long-awaited move to the Santiago Bernabeu this summer. To say the two shared a conversation would be pushing it: In the footage of their brief meeting, Edric doesn’t appear to be speaking. After a handshake, Pérez only says one line, but it’s perfect. “We’re waiting for you here,” he said.
Real Madrid have had Edric lined up for some time: The club announced they had reached an agreement to sign him from Palmeiras three days before the 2022 World Cup final. He would remain, under FIFA rules, in Brazil, with the club that molded him into the most coveted prospect in world football, until he turns 18 in July.
This kind of long-term planning is a bit unusual in the traditional way Real Madrid operate. The club is rightly described as a titan, and — under Perez’s management, especially — takes great pride in living the values associated with the classic definition of that term: impetuous, impulsive, irascible.
It sacks managers for failing to win the Champions League, signs players on the back of an impressive World Cup and broadcasts a regular show on its in-house TV channel that has been interpreted as a pre-emptive attempt to influence and/or intimidate referees. Real Madrid has always been the place that eats its own sons.
All this remains embedded in the fibers of the club. Over the past three years, Pérez has not only helped create a Super League intended to reshape world soccer more to his liking, but has championed it on a flashy late-night talk show — a bit like going on “Judge Judy” announcing the removal of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — and then continued to promote it even after being savaged by almost everyone else.
But there is no denying that there is something different about the current incarnation of Real Madrid. The club has always considered itself the biggest, strongest, brightest, most famous team not only in football, but in sports as a whole. Now, it is possible to argue that it should also be considered the best execution.
Her mildly absurd record in the Champions League confirms this. In the past decade, he has won the club’s beloved tournament five times. If Carlo Ancelotti’s side go down at Manchester City in the next two weeks, it would be just the third time since 2010 that Real Madrid have failed to reach at least the semi-finals of European competition.
A better measure, though, is what will happen this summer. In addition to Edric, already anointed as the best player of the new generation of football, Real Madrid are expected to (finally) sign Kylian Mbappé, the special of today. They should also be joined by Alphonso Davies, the left-back of Bayern Munich and Canada.
All three deals show how deftly Real Madrid are now navigating the transfer market. Edric is another specialist from Juni Calafat, the club’s head of recruitment, who has long been tasked with bringing Madrid the brightest prospects from around the world — and South America in particular.
Mbappé has been a case study in patience, with Real Madrid courting the player and biding his time, slowly and carefully positioning himself as his only realistic route away from Paris Saint-Germain, waiting until the financial conditions are right to sign a player currently employed by a club which is in effect an arm of a nation state.
Davies, too, is a masterpiece of patience: Real Madrid will give Bayern Munich the option of losing him for a fee this summer or for nothing when his contract expires in 2025. Bayern will, of course, resent it. But he’s familiar enough with this kind of strong-arm method that he might, privately, applaud a little.
They wouldn’t be the first club to admire — however desperately — how well Real Madrid have adapted to a financial landscape that, as the Super League plan showed, seemed to have turned against Europe’s old aristocrats.
Real Madrid don’t have the money, for example, to bully Premier League sides into selling players, so instead signed Antonio Rüdiger from Chelsea on a free transfer. It maintains an impressively prolific academy – according to analytics firm CIES, 97 of its graduates play professionally in Europe – but has also moved quickly to poach the likes of Eduardo Camavinga, Jude Bellingham and Aurelien Tchouaméni before they fell into English clutches.
The result is a club that, almost alone among the continent’s great old sides, can look to the future with pleasure. Barcelona have mortgaged a lot of tomorrow to pay for the sins of yesterday. Bayern Munich are set to hire their fourth manager in three years. Juventus is still reeling from a mass resignation of its board in 2022 amid allegations of fraudulent accounting.
Real Madrid, on the other hand, should next season be able to name a midfield of Camavinga, Tchouaméni and Bellingham and an attacking line of Rodrygo, Vinícius and Endrick. Where Federico Valverde fits in is anyone’s guess. It certainly doesn’t feel like the club’s fate rests on whatever Mbappé decides to do.
It may, in many ways, remain an old-fashioned club, run as a personal fiefdom by an all-powerful chairman. It doesn’t pretend to be data-driven, it’s admittedly modern, like Manchester City or Liverpool or Brighton, and it certainly doesn’t, at any point, feel any need to tell anyone how clever it is.
But it’s hard to escape the impression that of all the game’s traditional elite, Real Madrid are now the ones least in need of a Super League. It is true that this is not the reality that Florentino Pérez was hoping to grasp in the spring of 2024. He wanted to change, irrevocably, to suit his team. The reverse, however, seems to have worked just as well. It has its modern stadium. It has its star cluster. The world remains, as it has always been, fond of Real Madrid.
Emma Hayes and the Last Word
The end, for Emma Hayes, is in sight. Next weekend, her team Chelsea will face Manchester United in the semi-final of the FA Cup. A few days later, he has a Champions League semi-final with Barcelona to think about. There are five games left in the English Women’s Super League. If Chelsea win it all, Hayes can leave for her new job as United States coach with an admirable league record.
One, two or three of those trophies would be a fitting way for Hayes, the WSL’s greatest coach, to say goodbye to a league he has done so much to build. In recent weeks, however, the 47-year-old Hayes’ farewell tour has taken on an undeniably, but unexpectedly, controversial aspect.
First, he suggested that—from a coaching perspective—it might be less than ideal for teammates to be romantic partners. She quickly retracted those comments after it appeared they had caused resentment both within and outside her team.
Then, last week, she shoved Jonas Eidevall, her Arsenal counterpart, and then accused him of displaying “male aggression” by tackling a Chelsea player during the Blues’ defeat in the Women’s League Cup final. There, a recall — or even a clarification — seems less imminent, which may be explained by the fact that Hayes isn’t the first coach to find Eidevall’s behavior a bit harsh.
Hayes is usually honest. She is eloquent and fearless in equal measure. This is, in part, what has allowed her to develop a profile beyond women’s football. In recent weeks, however, he has shown an openness that borders on straight-shooting. The prevailing impression is that he does not want to leave England without clearing some things up.
If we get ideas from America
It’s curious to note, this week, that the idea of a luxury tax is being mooted by some Premier League clubs as a more palatable alternative to all those infernal points deductions. Well, that’s how it’s dressed up, anyway: What’s actually happening is that some of the league’s clubs are trying to find a method, essentially, to do away with financial regulation.
This is an increasingly popular stance because the Premier League has allowed the idea that cost controls are somehow “unfair” to fade. It is, however, disingenuous.
Those clubs who want to allow the market to run riot don’t want to level the playing field. Instead, they want to take an unpopular elite and replace it with another. The primary difference, of course, would be that this news includes and favors them. No one gives the slightest thought to collective justice.
However, the idea is out there, so let’s demystify it. The luxury tax has benefits for American sports. It wouldn’t work in England, partly because there is no salary cap and partly because some of the teams belong to nation states, making the idea of a financial penalty quite ludicrous. They would pay it and go on their merry way, driving other clubs to the wall as they do.
If you want a truly ‘fair’ Premier League, you need more financial regulation, not less. And, as discussed a while ago, if you want to take inspiration from the US, the best place to start would be with a commissioner, with offices and powers, who can enforce these rules in real time.
