Professor Simon Chadwick (photo Coventry University)
CRISTIANO RONALDO’s record-breaking move from the Premier League to La Liga could have huge negative knock on effects according to Simon Chadwick, professor of sport business strategy at Coventry University writes Steven Carpenter.
Earlier this month Chadwick told BBC Sport that Real Madrid’s spending spree would continue after the capture of Brazilian playmaker Kaka and today his predictions were proved correct.
Earlier today, Real Madrid signed the Portuguese international for a reported fee of £80million. Chadwick feels the move will have a knock-on effect for poorer clubs not just in Spain and England, but all over Europe.
“I think this deal is entirely predictable, but you’re going to see this even greater polarisation and what it does is increase the gap between the rich and poor,” said Chadwick.
“The problem is that it’s injecting money from outside the transfer system into the transfer system which will create wage inflation and the ramifications for clubs further down the league structures in Europe not just in Spain and England, but across Europe are potentially very serious.”
Chadwick’s next predictions are that Manchester United will re-invest money from the deal back into its own squad and Real Madrid’s summer spending spree will only get bigger and bigger.
“From Real Madrid’s point of view this deal clearly fits in with what Perez wants to do with the club and their ‘Galactico’s part 2’ and they will work really hard to generate commercial value from Ronaldo and Kaka together, but they are very good at commercialising.
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I think the deal makes good sense for Manchester United because they are going to make a huge profit on Ronaldo, which I would expect they will re-invest in other players.”
He added, “It would be reasonable to expect that Ribery and Benzema will end up at Manchester United or players of that sort of calibre. It’s good business for United.”
Ronaldo signed for the this year’s Champions League runners-up back in 2003 and has been heavily linked with move away from the Premier League outfit for some time, with Madrid publicly declaring their interest in the 24-year-old on numerous occasions.
The move will see Ronaldo link up with recent signing Kaka in what will form the second era of ‘the Galactico’s and Chadwick feels there will now be an even greater pressure on manager Manual Pellegrini to bring a huge amount of success to the Spanish club.
“Arguably the one thing in all of this which is going to be very interesting is would you want to be Real Madrid manager Manual Pellegrini? There is intense on him to perform and I think there will be intense pressure on the players too.
What sort of job security has he got because if he’s top of the league by the end of September/October then everything will be fine, but if by Christmas Real Madrid are not top of the league, Pellegrini is going to be thinking ‘I could well be out of a job here.”
He added, “This is not the end. I would expect to see David Villa at Real Madrid possibly next week.”
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