Florentino Perez will be jumpy, agitated, a goalless draw with Sporting Gijon sending his cortisol levels soaring. All summer he’s sat subdued, by his standards, biding his time, spending his energy attempting to put out existing fires at the Bernabeu, unable to indulge himself in his favourite pastime.
Bringing Mateo Kovacic to Real Madrid might have temporarily satisfied the cravings, but possibly not to the extent he would have liked. Perez will likely want more, names he can put up in spotlights, the sort he could beam into Madrid’s night sky like Gotham summoning Batman. The calls will go out.
By the end of the week, the numbers on his desk phone will be barely visible, worn away by anxiously sweaty fingers and thousands of button strikes. The screen on his Samsung Galaxy S6 (he wouldn’t use an iPhone, Apple doesn’t sponsor his club; Samsung do) will be equally battered.
He’ll have had Jorge Mendes on speed-dial all week. Rival presidents will get to the end of it either sick of his voice or knowing his personal number by heart, and probably both. The “comparable players” section on Transfermarkt‘s pages for Gareth Bale, James Rodriguez and Isco will have permanently remained on his home screen.
For most, this week is known as the final week of the transfer window. For Perez, it might simply known as the week. His time.
Sometimes when I picture the Real Madrid president, it’s not of him sitting at the Bernabeu or Valdebebas, but inside the top floor of a 500-story cartoon tower dominating the skyline of the Spanish capital, a caricature of him frantically scouring the lists of Europe’s top scorers, playmakers and most marketable talents, screaming at his secretary like Ari Gold in Entourage for not being able to locate Mendes.
Admittedly, such an image isn’t entirely fair to Perez. The Real Madrid president hasn’t gotten to where he is by lacking intelligence or business nous—you don’t rise to be the Chairman and CEO of Grupo ACS, as well as the No. 1 man of the world’s biggest football club, without a good dash of both.
But when confronted with the transfer market and buying players, Perez’s attitude to patience has been similar to that of Apple’s to battery life. Never content with what he already has, he’ll want to add names like Aguero, Pogba or De Gea, and if not them, he’ll want others anyway, the window’s final week heightening his thirst.
Wants and needs and two very separate things, though.
Interestingly, last week it was Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger who, while describing his own situation, basically outlined the sort of principle Perez should look to adopt this week. “The funds are there, people know that you have the resources,” Wenger said when quizzed on his efforts to sign new stars, “but the [appropriate] players are not available.”
Essentially, the Frenchman’s message has always been that buying for the sake of buying isn’t the answer—that if you can’t get exactly the man you want, then buying an alternative who isn’t certain to be better than what you already have isn’t how you do it.
In Wenger‘s case, that belief has always felt tinged with stubbornness—there are plenty of players who are better than those Arsenal already have, many of whom have switched clubs this summer, such Arturo Vidal, Nicolas Otamendi, Jackson Martinez and Morgan Schneiderlin—but at Real Madrid, the principle very much applies.
Unless Perez can prise away attacking stars from Barcelona or Bayern Munich (ludicrously fanciful in the case of the former; unthinkable at this stage in the window from the latter), or lure Sergio Aguero from Manchester City (just as unlikely), it’s almost impossible to improve upon what he already has up front: Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Bale, Rodriguez and Jese.
In midfield, it’s a similar story. Toni Kroos, Luka Modric, Isco, Kovacic and Casemiro currently headline Real’s central options, rendering the list of available upgrades extremely short. Unless it’s the powerful and multi-skilled Pogba whom Real and Perez can get—and given the scathing assessment of Madrid expressed by the Frenchman’s agent, Mino Raiola, that also seems fanciful—then Los Blancos are already at a point at which they’re close to maxed-out for talent.
As for the defence and David De Gea, while the Spaniard would be a magnificent addition, why not just wait and sign him for free in 2016?
Additionally, Perez, if he hasn’t already, would be well served reflecting on the sort of clubs at which he’s recently done his expensive shopping. Bale and Modric arrived from Tottenham, Isco came from Malaga, Rodriguez was bought from Monaco, Kovacic came from Inter Milan, Asier Illarramendi was prised from Real Sociedad and Keylor Navas was snatched from Levante.
In essence, all of those clubs are selling clubs at this point in time, unable to resist the advances of the white monster that is Real Madrid. But with Real Madrid’s squad now so star-studded, such outfits currently don’t have what Real need in order to improve; for Real Madrid’s squad to get significantly better in the final week of the transfer window, Perez would need to be plucking names from Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain or Juventus—clubs that can fend away Madrid if they choose to at this late stage.
Perez, therefore, should resist all his natural urges, his impulses, and sit tight. His squad is already stacked, and manager Rafa Benitez is already faced with tough decisions on whom to include and whom to leave out.
What’s more, too often Perez has sought external solutions to internally created problems, continually disrupting continuity and stability within the squad. Another venture into the transfer market would only be repeating previous mistakes.
Real Madrid already have the pieces they need; their improvement must come from within. Perez can settle those cortisol levels by not picking up the phone.
from Bleacher Report – Front Page http://ift.tt/1hEfQOj
via IFTTT http://ift.tt/eA8V8J
INTER CLUB PAVIA "C'E' SOLO L'INTER" 