ON SATURDAY, MÍCHEL SALGADO, the Real Madrid right back, was asked about his club’s most recent signing, Jonathan Woodgate. His response unequivocally underscored the fact that Real’s glitzy Zidanes y Pavones policy was officially dead. “Many times signing virtually unknown players can work out well,” he mused, “whereas bringing in famous players is no guarantee that they will do as well as expected. You never know. Those of you outside the club kept asking Real Madrid to sign players to fill specific needs, rather than just big names. Well, (Woodgate) is a player signed to fill a specific need.”
Woodgate may not be quite as much of a no-name as Salgado implies — after all, he has appeared in the Champions League and boasts five England caps — but it is fair to say that, until a week ago, he could have snorkelled naked in Cibeles fountain and it would not have made the Spanish papers.
Thus, Florentino Pérez, the Real president, has effectively admitted the failure of the vaunted policy that saw Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo and David Beckham arrive at the Bernabéu in successive summers. Pérez believed that the only players worth having were A-list superstars, preferably in attacking positions. The rest of the squad could be rounded out with youth-team players who made little money and cost even less. That, in a nutshell, was Zidanes y Pavones.
Effectively, Pérez did away with the “middle class”, turning Real into the equivalent of a banana republic, where multimillionaires, such as Beckham and Zidane, rub shoulders with paupers, such as Ruben and Borja. It was this “middle class” of players, Pérez railed, who had been Real’s undoing under Fernando Sanz, the previous president, adding that it was worth spending money only on superstars. And the results were there for all to see: Pérez, who was re-elected last month, won a European Cup and two Liga crowns in his first four-year term; under Sanz, Real were twice European champions and won one Liga title.
But it was last season’s dramatic collapse — when Real came up empty-handed on every front, losing their last five league games — that really drove the point home: without a supporting cast, the galácticos were merely human. José Antonio Camacho, the new coach, understood this, which is why he pestered Pérez into strengthening the areas in which Real were so glaringly deficient last season, namely defence and the depth of the squad.
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And so the “middle class” has returned, at least in part. The club spent £30 million on two no-nonsense central defenders — Woodgate and Walter Samuel, formerly of AS Roma. Neither is likely to shift too many shirts or adorn any billboards. They were signed to be foot soldiers, obscure worker bees who make the big guns look good.
At the same time, the club welcomed back two veterans from loan spells in the French league, Fernando Morientes, the striker who was with AS Monaco, and Albert Celades, the versatile midfield player from Bordeaux. Pérez, who saw them simply as handsomely paid dead wood, wanted to farm them both out again, but Camacho insisted that they would be valuable additions to the bench.
The behind-the-scenes struggle of wills between the two has been one of the running themes at the Bernabéu this summer, culminating with the drawn-out transfer negotiations for Patrick Vieira. Camacho lobbied hard for the Arsenal captain, but Pérez was unwilling to offer a salary package comparable to that of the “senior” galácticos. The president argued that while Vieira might be just as good as the others in footballing terms, he simply wasn’t “mediatic” (one of Pérez’s favourite words) enough. He wouldn’t help to sell jerseys, he didn’t have a string of cash-laden sponsors following him around and there were no legions of adoring Vieira fans in the Asian market waiting around for Real’s next summer tour.
Camacho, the old-school football man, may have lost the Vieira battle, but he succeeded in snuffing out whatever other pretensions Pérez may have had of bringing in another high-priced galáctico striker. The club flirted with Ruud van Nistelrooy, Francesco Totti and Thierry Henry, but steered clear of any formal approach, largely at Camacho’s urging.
The one concession to Pérez’s galáctico fetish was, of course, Michael Owen, but it was the kind of concession that Camacho could live with. Owen’s contractual situation at Liverpool made the £8 million asking price extremely reasonable and, more important, he is not laden with the kind of massive ego likely to cause unrest in the dressing-room or with the media.
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The England striker also provides options up front, particularly when it comes to resting Ronaldo (a player with whom Camacho is not entirely enamoured) or Raúl. Pérez, of course, is ecstatic: for £8 million he got the biggest English commercial commodity not named Beckham. With three Englishmen at Real, the club can now hope to become England’s favorite Liga side, much like AC Milan gained massive support in the Netherlands during the Marco van Basten/Ruud Gullit/Frank Rijkaard era.
These days any analysis of Real must be made through both lenses: Camacho’s footballing perspective and Pérez’s commercial view. And while the former is nominally responsible for technical choices, any decision is likely to be the result of “yin and yang” negotiations, balancing footballing prowess and “mediatic” impact. This world view has seeped through to the players, which is why Salgado didn ‘t think twice about describing Woodgate, his new colleague, as “virtually unknown”.
It’s a seminal change in how Real’s footballers view themselves and the club; we didn’t hear Gary Neville, for example, calling Gabriel Heinze a “virtual unknown”, even though the Argentina defender is no more a household name in Manchester than Woodgate is in Madrid.
It remains to be seen to what degree Camacho can temper Pérez this season. Getting his boss to allow for a “middle class” of players and to all but admit that sound defending is also an ingredient of success was already a tremendous victory for the new manager. It is unlikely that Carlos Queiroz, his predecessor, who was seen by many as little more than a yes-man, would have ever dreamt of standing up to Pérez.
Camacho, though, is a local hero, a man who won 81 Spain caps and eight league titles in an 18-year career at Real. He has the gravitas to counter Pérez, the clout to make the club consider buying a player such as Woodgate, which would have been unthinkable a year or two ago. He understands that you need the unglamorous players and defenders to attain success.
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It may have something to do with Camacho’s own playing career, which was largely spent at right back, the least glamorous position on the pitch. As a former grunt himself, he knows that wars are won by infantrymen as much as generals.