The Galacticos Are Dead
How Zidane’s Real Madrid killed the Galacticos era once and for all
History didn’t just precede this Champions League final. History wrote and published the book on this final before it happened.
A lot can and will be made about Juventus’ inability to get over the hump, especially having lost two of the last three finals. Many pieces will be (rightfully) written about Real Madrid’s repeat, or about their three-in-four mark of excellence in the UCL. And there should be something written up about how Spanish teams have taken the last four UCL trophies, with 6 of 8 finalists no less.
But there’s more than recent history at play here, especially for a club as storied as Real Madrid.
This is far from your father’s Real Madrid, or at least your older brother’s Real. This is nowhere near the Galacticos of the early years of last decade.
No, this nearly wire-to-wire La Liga winner, this defense-demolishing juggernaut? They’ve demolished the Galacticos too, by the hand of a former Galactico no less.
The era where Real Madrid acted like a 10-year-old with a $1000 Toys R’ Us gift card is either worthy of acclaim or derision, but regardless, it set in stone Real Madrid’s reputation for the new millennium. Then, it was buying Luis Figo and David Beckham and building the greatest FIFA Ultimate Team known to mankind. Now, it’s snapping up Toni Kroos and Gareth Bale to build the second-greatest FIFA Ultimate Team (or third, if you’re a Barça fan). It doesn’t matter if you worship at the shrine of Florentino Pérez or taped his headshot to your dartboard. Real Madrid is the kind of name that should go in neon lights on its Wikipedia page.
Except, that’s the beauty of the current iteration of the club: it’s all about the team. As god-awful as that cliché is (and it physically pained me to write it), the truth is evident to anyone who’s seen Real Madrid beat up on their opposition this season. Whether it was Bayern or Betis, Sporting Gijón or Sporting Lisbon, this was a team that, front to back, could dominate in twenty different ways. Or more accurately, with twenty different lineups.
Last season, six players made 30+ appearances for Real Madrid in La Liga. Cristiano Ronaldo started 36 matches, while Luka Modric and Toni Kroos appeared in 32 matches each. This season, only three players made 30+ appearances, and Marcelo was the only one to start over half of Real’s matches.
Put another way: Lucas Vasquez made the most appearances for Real Madrid in La Liga this season… with 12 starts and 21 substitute appearances.
Of course, half of this was out of necessity, given that Real was less bitten by an injury bug and more ravaged by a modest yet still biblical swarm of locusts. Absences of four or more matches sidelined Keylor Navas, Sergio Ramos, Raphaël Varane, Pepe, Fabio Coentrão, Daniel Carvajal, Danilo, Casemiro, Luka Modric, and Gareth Bale. Cristiano Ronaldo missed three of the first four matches, mainly on the heels of a nasty knee injury suffered in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. The team had seven suspensions for bookings on the season. By any and all accounts, the trainers at the Bernabeu earned their paychecks this season, and probably got some overtime to boot.
It’s also disingenuous to chalk the rotation purely up to injuries, however. Zidane has rotated the squad masterfully in his first full season at the helm, a job much more difficult than it would seem on the surface. As anyone who’s played Football Manager can attest, it’s damn hard keeping a group of world-class players rested and motivated throughout a campaign on three fronts, no matter their role at the club. Be it starter, backup, or James Rodriguez, buy-in and chemistry is absolutely imperative, and Zidane has clearly commanded that investment from a squad he’s almost entirely inherited.
Not only is it important to make sure the 20+ players in his rotation are satisfied and playing nice together, but Zidane has also had to make sure that, well, they’re playing. A deep Champions League run can be grueling, as they found out a couple seasons ago when they bowed out to Juventus in the semifinals. Add in the injury toll and the fact that they actually fielded eligible players in the Copa Del Rey this season, and you have more than enough potential for Real Madrid to faceplant an inch from the ribbon while Barca and Juve point and laugh and trample the finish line.
Instead, Zidane was constantly rotating and resting players, even making sure Ronaldo was getting days off (presumably to attend to his booming hotel business). While their archrivals stumbled the second Iniesta was sidelined and struggled all season with suddenly being an aging squad, Real Madrid seemed to trot out a slightly different lineup each week and get the same results each time.
Another function of all this is that the team in general didn’t play as top-heavy as it has in past years. As much as there is made of MSN at Barca, there has to be engines and creators behind them. There has to be a squad in total balance, so that when the normal La Liga-dominating strategy of “put up as many goals as possible” doesn’t fully play out, they aren’t left twisting in the wind.
For one thing, more players have gotten in on the goalscoring action. In the 2014–15 UCL-winning season, Real had five players reach 7+ goals in all competitions, one of whom was super sub and generally adorable individual Chicharito. It was a similar story in the Galacticos era, where only four or five players would reach 7 as Ronaldo and Raul dominated the goalscoring numbers.
This season, seven Madrid players reached 7 goals in La Liga alone, while Marco Asensio and Casemiro both tallied six in all competitions. Even subtracting the set-piece heroics of Sergio Ramos, that’s a clear indication of the direction this Real side has gone. With 21 players tallying an assist and eight nabbing 8+ in all competitions, the balance of this team purely from an attacking standpoint is staggering. The Galacticos never had nearly that kind of production; the best they could manage on assist totals was four players with 8+ in the 2004–05 season.
Merely taking a glance at the statistics book doesn’t do this team justice, however. Just sift through their squad and see how many players played an absolutely crucial part this season:
- Luka Modric, the versatile possession chief whose movement and passing came pivotal to their success against Juventus on Saturday.
- Toni Kroos, an absolute visionary on the ball and one of the highest workrate players on the squad (he was third on the team with 2.6 tackles per game in La Liga).
- Daniel Carvajal, Danilo, and Marcelo, fully modern wingbacks whose pace and sheer aggressiveness overloaded defenses all season, while still not leaving the defense hung out to dry on the counter.
- Isco, finally looking comfortable at the Bernabeu, finally turning into the do-it-all attacking midfielder so many dreamed he could be for this squad. He delivered a revelatory season with more creativity than a writer’s retreat for Pulitzer winners.
- Casemiro, possibly the embodiment of this new era in Real Madrid’s history, and a generator of a man who will be duking it out with N’Golo Kante for the most Makélélé comparisons of 2017.
So is this a Neo-Galacticos era, then? Galacticos 2.0? So many people want to put a stamp on this Real Madrid team, to label it one way or another. And in doing so, it’s become nearly impossible not to evoke the early-millennium dream team that promised the world and delivered a continental breakfast.
The reality is that this team isn’t anywhere close to the Galacticos. All the time spent comparing and contrasting this UCL-dominating club with the Galacticos should lead to this conclusion: the Galacticos are dead.
The squad implementation is a big chunk of it, of course. With all the rotation, with keeping even the superstars well-rested, this team stayed balanced and potent even when Zizou trotted out a full-on B team. Even Ronaldo took a few more days off here and there, in the name of staying the best team in the world for almost the entire season. Players who didn’t fit the system, like James Rodriguez, saw their playing time cut down, something nigh unthinkable a decade and a half ago given the price paid for him. The lineup morphed more often than a season of Power Rangers on fast forward, yet they powered through with 5 losses all season (one of which was a 2–1 defeat that still carried them past their crosstown rivals in the Champions League).
This also isn’t just a team with one backbone, like Claude Makélélé’s Madrid. Casemiro played the closest approximation of Makélélé, of course. But without the versatility and workrate of players like Modric and Kroos in the midfield or Carvajal and Marcelo on the wings, this team wouldn’t be nearly as successful. This isn’t a Galacticos strategy where the best defense is an elite offense; this is a team fully competent from end to end, and fully in sync with each other as well.
Just as important to the argument, though, is Real’s current transfer policy. Beyond Bale and (I guess) James, this is a team built on a number of smart, market-value €30m transfers and <€10m transfers along with a bit of youth development as well.
Lucas Vasquez was brought through the youth ranks, spending a season on loan at Espanyol before returning to play in most of Madrid’s matches this season. It’s a similar story for Carvajal, whose only departure from Real Madrid was a season essentially on loan to German (former) powerhouses Bayer Leverkusen. Keylor Navas was picked up from Levante for €10m in the wake of his downright superheroic performance for Costa Rica in the World Cup, while Raphaël Varane was snatched from French side RC Lens for the same price at only 18 years old. Marcelo joined from Fluminense for €6.5m at 19, Casemiro came over from São Paulo for €6m, and Marco Asensio cost them only €3.5m to nab off of Mallorca.
Danilo, Modric, Kroos, and Isco all packed their bags for the Bernabeu for a combined €121.5m, yes, but given that Transfermarkt.com put their combined market value at €132m, that’s more than reasonable business. Especially for a club that could be forced to pay premiums for talent (because they can afford those premiums), getting value on those kinds of players is absolutely key to succeeding in the transfer window.
This team is not the Galacticos. Even with some parallels that could be drawn, the club right now is fundamentally different than how it operated under Florentino Perez’s first stint as president. The team’s depth is unrivaled, the manager has a full grasp (and full reign) on how to manage the side, and there’s a full nervous system to this team while the Galacticos lost their backbone once their engine left. But one major difference stands above the rest:
This Real Madrid is better.
Will Clarke is co-creator of The Challengers Podcast, a soccer website and podcast that discusses the Premier League, the Bundesliga, and La Liga. Listen to their show on iTunes, like them on Facebook, and follow them on twitter — @ChallengersPod.
