Real Madrid’s seemingly endless pot of money has seen them compile arguably the best squad in world football. Just under 120 million Euros was spent by Real in the summer and their match against Sevilla in the Spanish Super Cup saw them field the most expensive starting XI in history - worth a mind boggling £364 million.
Five of the top ten most expensive transfers of all time are by Real Madrid and the club have spent just over 700 million Euros since 2009, another scary number. While it’s not just Real Madrid who are dominating La Liga in terms of spending power - Barcelona’s starting XI is worth just over £250 million - Madrid’s impact has certainly inflated the market around the world and has made La Liga totally uneven unlike most other leagues around.
The majority of the record transfers in world football have been made after 2009, the year in which Madrid broke the record twice first with Kaka and then with Cristiano Ronaldo. There is a case to be made that Madrid have completely inflated the current market and are the main reason for the ridiculous transfer fees that are made today.
La Liga has suffered aswell from this apparent monopoly that has emerged, of course that was temporally halted by Atletico Madrid’s title success in 2014. But that was the first time a team outside of Barcelona and Real Madrid had lifted the La Liga trophy since 2004 and whilst the two clubs have always won regular titles, it hasn’t been as dominant as in recent times.
It does seem pretty much a case of who ever spends the most money will be the most successful, which takes away a lot from what football is really about. Madrid are the current Champions League holders and are currently on a 22-match winning streak, but you can’t help but feel the amount of money they have spent overshadows this fact.
La Liga might have some of the best players in the world but they only belong to two teams and the sheer dominance and gap in La Liga has made it pretty dull and predictable. There is always going to be the odd shock result in a league campaign but Real have won 13 of their 15 La Liga fixtures, scoring 55 goals in the process and yet are only one point ahead of Barcelona demonstrating how these two teams win pretty much every time they play.
Madrid also have scored more than four times in a single match on eight occasions in the league. Whilst Atletico won the league against the odds last season, there isn’t much hope for any other team outside of Real and Barcelona just because the spending power of these two clubs is too great.
A lot of money gets spent in leagues such as the Premier League but as this season has proved, there is no easy fixture in England’s top flight and the gap between top and bottom is much less than in La Liga. Financial Fair Play might have been brought in to limit spending but it looks as if Madrid will always have an endless pot of gold in which they can buy whoever they please. By doing this, they are ruining what football stands for - or at least used to - and are ripping the heart and soul out of the great game.
Long are the days where a club can get promoted to the top division, win it in their first season and by two years time have already won back-to-back European trophies, as Nottingham Forest did well over 30 years ago. Real Madrid are the main part of the problem that football is now all about money.