 Cristiano Ronaldo’s transfer from Manchester United to Real Madrid is a landmark transfer in many ways. Financially speaking, at a credit crunch-busting £80 million it is the most expensive transfer in world football history. In terms of precedent it is huge. As one of the biggest clubs in football it is almost unheard for a player at the top of his game to want to leave Old Trafford, let alone for Sir Alex Ferguson to allow it.
But Ronaldo’s move to the Bernabeu is also ground-breaking in another sense. It is hugely important in terms of what it represents for world football because it symbolises a new era, a seismic shift. In terms of worldwide glamour and appeal it represents the passing of the baton from England to Spain.
Viewers of Sky Sports in England will be familiar with the ever slick Richard Keys, frontman for the network’s Premier League coverage, and the way in which he perpetually, endlessly drums into our head that we are bearing witness to ‘the best league in the world.’ And, all credit to him, he does a good job. Few would previously have disagreed, particularly in recent years.
The last five Champions League finals have all involved at least one English club - you have to go as far back as AS Monaco vs FC Porto in 2004 for a final that didn’t - and for the last three years, three out of the four Champions League semi-finalists have also been Premier League clubs. Such statistics no doubt have UEFA President Michel Platini waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
But, in light of the Ronaldo transfer, can Mr. Keys really look through the camera at us in 2009/2010 and proclaim such bold statements about the all-conquering might of English football? And if he does will you believe him?
Spanish football’s standing in the global game did not suddenly begin to soar the moment the ink dried on Cristiano Ronaldo’s lucrative 9 million euro a season contract though, as much as Florentino Perez would like you to believe. Spanish football has always possessed an appealing magnetism and allure.
No, La Liga’s upward trajectory to becoming arguably the most attractive league in the world game can more likely be traced back to Spain’s triumph at EURO 2008. The international and domestic game received a huge shot in the arm from Spain’s success in Austria and Switzerland, and that feel-good factor filtered through to the domestic leagues, producing a hugely entertaining season at both ends of the La Liga spectrum.
FC Barcelona’s unprecedented treble, Champions League included, only added to the increasing prestige of the Spanish game. This was, after all, a team playing some of the most breathtakingly attractive football seen anywhere over arguably the last 20 years. Barcelona became the team to watch in the league to watch. Spain currently boasts the European champions both internationally and at club level.
Barcelona’s unprecedented success in 2008/2009 then brought about an unforeseen but important chain reaction. It forced Real Madrid, ranked by Forbes Magazine as the second most valuable club in world football and Barcelona’s fierce rivals, into a corner. They say for every action there’s a reaction: well Real Madrid’s reaction was an incredible £220 million spending spree aimed at bringing in the finest players in the world to ensure that they and not Barcelona would be the most successful and most talked about.
Madrid’s dramatic summer of cash splashing certainly grabbed the headlines. It became the talking point in football during a period in which attention should have been reserved for admiring the majestic beauty of Barcelona’s football over the 08/09 season. "We have to do in one year what we would normally do in three" declared Perez. He was not joking.
Spain’s La Liga now possesses in its ranks the current World Player of the Year, the previous World Player of the Year and, most likely, the next World Player of the Year. And in Kaka, Ronaldo, Messi, Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Karim Benzema and Zlatan Ibrahimovic et al the rivalry between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona is now not only an intense, heated, politically-charged battle between Spain’s royal institution and the autonomous rebel region of Catalunya (as if that wasn’t reason enough to get excited), but also a coming together of the finest football players anywhere in world football today. An aesthetic treat. A football purist’s wet dream. THE game of next season.
English decline
At the same time English football’s pulling power appears to be on the wane somewhat. Two of the Premier League’s standout performers from last season now play in Madrid (Xabi Alonso, Ronaldo), while most of the marquee names on the summer transfer market ended up not in England but elsewhere.
This has been attributed to many factors, most of them financial. With the government introducing a 50p in the pound English tax rate for high earners as of April 2010, Premier League clubs now face wage demands far higher than their rivals in Spain.
For example, according to Deloitte’s sports business group if a player in the Premier League negotiating a new contract this pre-season demanded 3 million euros per annum after tax, the cost to a Premier League club following the tax increase in April 2010 would be 6.8 million euros. In Spain that same contract would cost a La Liga club 4 million euros. A Premier League club would therefore need to pay 70 per cent more than a Spanish club to give a player the same net pay. That becomes a big issue, both for the paying club and for top players looking for more bang for their buck.
In my opinion the dominance of any one major European league is a naturally cyclical process. At the turn of the 21st century this same debate took place only replace England with Italy, who were dominant but losing their grip, again to Spanish football’s eminent charms. "For quality and spectacle Spanish club football is the best in the world," quipped Luis Figo at the time, while others in Italy lamented the increasingly evident decline in stature of their national game.
"Others have caught up," said Giovanni Trapattoni, Italy coach in 2001. "There was a time when we had a league that was richer in technique, in sheer class, and was tactically much better organised. That is no longer the case."
As the balance of pulling power swings Spain’s way how long before similar gripes are aired by coaches ruefully pondering the sudden decline of the English game?
Jonathan Fadugba is publisher and editor-in-chief of Just-Football.com, a site that offers you analytical insight into world football the game, the culture, the spectacle, the passion.
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