Transfer Policy: Real Madrid

I know the spotlight has been on FC Barcelona the last few weeks considering their intent to sign Alexis Sanchez from Udinese, who is considered by many football pundits to be the next break-out star in world football, and slew of others like Giuseppe Rossi from Villarreal or Juan Mata from Valencia, and let's of course not forget the protracted mess that the Cesc Fabregas signing has become, but let's switch the focus a bit.

Debates at FC Barcelona have sprung up about the value in signing players on the market rather than trusting in the youth at the club, the value of bolstering an attack that is one of the greatest in club history rather than signing reinforcements for a creaky defense, and even the need to re-enter a needless arms-race for talent with Real Madrid in the battle for public opinion. It's a tricky situation to run your club reflexively with what a rival is doing. It's even riskier to sign players in some desperate need to negate a rival's strengths. You don't create the best version of yourself, you create an imbalanced Frankenstein's monster with parts culled from different teams and different systems with no thought about how the pieces are going to fit and trusting that the personality of your coach and his system is going to bring them together. I think that's what's become of Real Madrid's transfer policy.

Real Madrid have signed four players this Summer, so far. Nuri Sahin from Dortmund is a great signing but he´s injured. He missed the last month of the season or so and looks to miss much of training camp. If he returns to form, he gives Madrid versatility and much needed help to the person I think is the key to their midfield: Xabi Alonso. The others I´m not so sure about. Jose Callejón from Espanyol is an ex-Madrid cantera player. I like his pace, but he´s a wing player on a squad with many wing players. He moves from a first-choice starter on the wings at Espanyol to no better than second-choice behind Di Maria or Ronaldo. He´ll give you depth, but he isn´t half the player Pedro León is and he´s already sitting on the bench. They sign Hamit Altintop because they want to give more steel at left-back, but he´s injured, so they´ll tag his contract on to the long list of players drawing a salary who can´t, won´t or aren´t allowed to play. Lastly, they sign Raphael Varane from Lens. He´s highly regarded, he has an admirer in Zinedine Zidane and his style of play has been likened to Rio Ferdinand in England, but he´s 18 years old. He´s not going to supplant Carvalho, Pepe, Ramos nor Arbeloa right now. He might sit the bench, ride that conveyor belt between the Bernabéu and Castilla, or he might just stay in France for another year on-loan. They paid 10 million euros for a squad player. Imagine that.

I won´t even go into their push to bring in a new Galáctico like Kún Aguero or Neymar. They need to sort out what will happen to Fernando Gago, Lass Diarra, Garay, Pedro León, Kaká and Canales. Some of them are going to ride out their contracts and stifle negotiations. A lot of them might be counting on this being José Mourinho´s last year at the Bernabeu and they think to ride it out until someone else takes over. The club on the other hand, expects to sell all of them before any more players can be bought.

All in all, the transfer policy at Real Madrid seems very chaotic to me. Why buy just to keep players from strengthening your rivals? Why is it that one or two agents control the majority of players that the club have signed over the last five years? I know Florentino Perez is obsessed with finding his own Messi, but why do they need Neymar when they already have Cristiano Ronaldo? As usual, that´s a problem with the transfer policy in general, it´s been going on for a long time, and it doesn´t seem to change no matter who runs the show at the Bernabéu.