Manchester United accepts record $131 million bid for Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid
The hair-gel industry in northwest England suffered a catastrophic blow Thursday in a world-record sports transaction after which the soccer marvel Cristiano Ronaldo seemed Spain-bound.
When Manchester United, the colossal English club, reaped $131 million for the negotiation rights for Ronaldo from Real Madrid, the colossal Spanish club, immediate sympathy had to veer toward those in Greater Manchester who make, distribute and sell refined goo.
If Real Madrid’s spending just this week -- $223 million on two phenomenal players -- seemed oblivious to a global recession, these people might feel the brunt.
The gel required to prepare Ronaldo’s hair for a game in six blossoming, dazzling years at Manchester United always did seem sufficient to slather a large farm animal, but it also helped feed the spectacle that fed the staggering payment that transferred the reigning FIFA world player of the year who, at 24, somehow manages to achieve both absurdity and respectability.
The former stems from his runway-model looks and utter lack of interest in cloaking his stunningly comprehensive vanity.
The latter, which managed to occlude the former even in unpretentious northwest England, entails the Portuguese star’s raved-about dedication to his craft, a renowned toil that has enabled both the 95 goals he showered across the last three seasons and fearsome talent that makes him a radioactive presence on the pitch.
The man has substance beyond that in his hair, so the resounding relocation of a spectacle birthed a heap of realities and questions.
It epitomized the runaway stakes of the globe’s biggest sport, especially the mushrooming European Champions League, a continent-wide competition in which Manchester United has reached the last two finals, winning one, while nine-time champion Real Madrid has suffered recent irrelevance.
The very idea of spending $131 million just to negotiate with one player -- especially just after the $92 million to sign the Brazilian phenomenon Kaka from Italy’s AC Milan -- has known no peer even in the United States, where the most profligate case would be the Boston Red Sox’s $51-million bid to negotiate with Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, whom they signed.
“It is very puzzling at a time when football faces some of its worst-ever financial challenges,” European soccer President Michel Platini told the BBC. “These transfers are a serious challenge to the idea of fair play and the concept of financial balance.”
Further, the Ronaldo splurge ended a speculative English-media melodrama during which Ronaldo would restate his childhood daydream of playing for Real Madrid or restate his allegiance to Manchester United. Then Sir Alex Ferguson, the imperious Manchester United manager, would impugn Real Madrid’s tactics as tampering and unleash such pearls as the famous utterance last December, “I wouldn’t sell them a virus.”
He did sell them a star Thursday, when a Manchester United statement read, “At the request of Cristiano -- who has again expressed his desire to leave -- and after discussion with the player’s representatives, United have agreed to give Real Madrid permission to talk to the player.”
It lent fresh oomph to the towering Spanish rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona. It represented a bid at yet another diva collection for a proud 107-year-old Madrid club that early in the decade famously stockpiled stars such as Zinedine Zidane, the Brazilian star Ronaldo, Luis Figo, David Beckham, Roberto Carlos and Raul, to results many would find glittering but Madrid fans found blase.
Most of all, it illustrated Real Madrid’s highbrow desperation with the soaring ascent of archrival Barcelona, which just hoarded the Spanish league title, the concurrent Spanish cup title and the European Champions League title all in the same picturesque season, all while stopping by Madrid on May 2 to thrash the home club by a telltale and thoroughly shattering score of 6-2.
In England, Ronaldo’s pending move relieved the recurring waking nightmares of hordes of English fans accustomed to his lacerating attacks toward their feckless goalkeepers. It presented the iconic Ferguson, 67, with a chance at another incarnation in a 23-season Manchester United stint laden with them.
And then, most curiously, it shoved a test case at a withering fear Manchester United fans have held since the American family of Malcolm Glazer, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, bought the venerated club in 2005.
From then on, even as Ferguson, Ronaldo, the English phenom Wayne Rooney et al accrued three straight league titles and other cups that included the 2008 Champions League title, fans have fretted as to whether servicing the gigantic debt with which the Glazers purchased the club might hamper the acquisition of elite players.
While Manchester United is expected to contend for daydreams with its remaining talent even after Ronaldo, the cash infusion will rank among the more carefully inspected 80 million British pounds.
In all the loud uncertainty, the only sure winners in the two-country transaction that trumped the world’s second-biggest (for Kaka) within the same week, both of which trounced the $64 million Real Madrid spent on Zidane in 2001, might be those entrenched in the Madrid hair-gel industry.
Even from England, you could almost hear their corks popping.
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