I've just been reading that they don't have a pot to piss in.
Real Madrid's success papered over their spiralling costs – now the party is over it is clear for all to see
For the Madrid of the last decade, the European success of the last five years has always come at a price, one that was ultimately unsustainable for the club, ignored by a supine Spanish media, and unchallenged under the autocracy of the president Florentino Perez. As long as there was glory in the Champions League it never seemed to matter that the club were borrowing to pay a spiralling wage bill, selling players to stay in profit and staggering under a delayed, debt-heavy stadium redevelopment.
That Madrid have sustained the myth that they are the natural final destination for every great player is as remarkable as anything else they have achieved in the last five years. To recap what this column has long reported, their last financial reports were published on the final day of June, 24 hours before they pay their bi-annual wage bill which was, in the most recent accounts, €207 million for the half year. At a stroke that wiped out the €190 million cash reserves that had been framed in some quarters as the transfer budget for the following year.
To meet the shortfall ten days later
the club sold Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus, with an up-front payment of €50 million that meant for this year they may not have been obliged to borrow to cover their existing wage bill. With the fee booked and Ronaldo’s previous salary commitments to 2021 divested, the club avoided projecting a €87 million loss that even Perez would have struggled to explain to the membership.
Ronaldo’s direct replacement, the Dominican Republic international Mariano, who returned to the club from Lyon, has scored just one Champions League goal this season. Thibaut Courtois was signed in return for Chelsea being waived their second payment on the striker Alvaro Morata, whom Madrid had sold them in the summer of 2017 in order to claw back accounting losses in that final year. One year later, Ronaldo, the greatest goalscorer in Madrid’s history was sold to do the same, and only now is the failure to adequately replace him being felt eight months later.
When the list of players in whom Madrid would be interested is inevitably drawn up, the question is never the most fundamental: what are they to sign them with? Madrid’s public accounts reveal they simply do not have the cash for the huge up-front payment for Harry Kane or, even more implausible, Kylian Mbappe. Even Eden Hazard, whose contract situation makes him a more realistic target, would have to be a buy now, pay later. Chelsea’s director Marina Granovskaia may well ask why she would want to risk facing Madrid in the Champions League next season, with her club’s current best player on the opposing side, for little immediate financial gain.