Rafeal Signs On for Five!

Awesome! No more Cristiano Ronaldo crap! Hooray, we have signed one of the best midfielders in the world for 13 million euros, half of his true price which I estimate based on the inflated fees that fly around Europe these days is between 30-35 million euros. Thats a very good deal, in no small part due to his rather short-sided release clause of 1 million euros that would come into effect next summer. Hamburg really had no option but to sell in order to make some money off of his transfer. They may have been weakend by this sale, but Martin Jol will invest wisely I believe.

HSV chairman Bernd Hoffmann had this to say about the sale of his captain:

‘HSV and Rafael have enjoyed three successful years together,’

‘Rafael was the captain of the team and provided some special football moments with his excellent performances.

‘We wish him a lot of success with his new challenge.’

‘Rafael has developed into one of Europe’s top players while at HSV and, with his individual class, he played a decisive role in the positive development of HSV.

‘We wish him all the best for the future.’

Some high praise from the chairman no less, which usually does not happen these days with player sales. I think we can all agree that based off these statements, we have ourselves a very smart and virtuous player, not a vain, flashy spray on tan player like Ronaldo.

Rafeal is a very intelligent and skilled attacking midfielder that was raised in the Ajax academy back when that meant something. He, like Andy Van der Meyde and Wesley Sneijder was the last of the truely class players Ajax has produced. Since them, its been pretty barren unfortunately, save maybe a Ryan Babel or a Urby Emanuelson who are good players, but have a way to go to reaching the level of Sneijder or VdV, as well as the lows of Andy Van der Meyde.

Although many will look at this as a bit of a panic buy from Real with the recent loss of Wesley Sneijder (more on that here), its a deal thats been in the works for about two weeks, and it looks to have been finalized at the Emirates Cup, where Rafeal didnt play for Hamburg, and somehow the press put two in two together to figure out the deal would be finalized after the two teams met on Saturday. With the loan (really a sale) of Esteban Granero to Getafe and the loan of Dani Parejo to QPR (dont get this move at all), the attacking midfield position, which is technically a right midfield slot, was lacking a player. Sure its techincally Guti’s spot to loose, but I have a feeling his inconsistencies wont be a problem for VdV to play a few games this year.

Another option is of course to play him in place of Raul. He works best behind the striker, in the ‘hole’, and has some good finishing abilties to his credit, scoring 29 goals in 74 games for Hamburg. Of course Higuain will now be crapping his pants, so I assume he will be practing his shooting at a local Madrid barn, trying to hit it. The main aspect to take out of this is, besides his attacking play, his leadership qualities or the absolutely dynamic financial deal it was, it signals an intent to win the CL and stay top of the La Liga standings. And thats what we all want to see, continuous improvement from the team.

Personal info:
Name: Rafael Ferdinand van der Vaart
Place of Birth: Heemskerk, Netherlands
Date of Birth: 11/02/1983
Position: Attacking midfielder

Career:
1987-1993: De Kennemers
1993-2005: Ajax
2005-2008: HSV Hamburg

Honors:
Dutch Eredivisie: 2002, 2004
Dutch Cup: 2002
Dutch Super Cup: 2003
European Player of the Year: 2003

The official announcment is here.

Van der Vaart will be officially presented on Tuesday 5 August at 13:00 CET in the Presidential Balcony of the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium. He will be signing a 5 year contract, although the terms of that contract have yet to be released. If you would like to read the glowing synopsis of his career go here. So we dont know what number he will take, but Don Stefano will be there to give him his jersey tomorrow. I know Im excited!

It looks like we have finally made our summer move, so we can put to rest Cristiano Ronaldo for another year and celebrate the capture of Rafeal Van de Vaart, who will have a nickname eventually, I cant take typing all that out. Also not discussed by the main media outlets (although Real mentioned it on their site’s career synopsis) is that this is a packaged deal of a transfer. We now have stalking rights to Sylvie Van der Vaart, which is simply making this deal even sweeter. Raul’s wife is hot, so is Gutis’. Iker’s girlfriend aint bad, and I was told that Ruben de la Red’s wife was the cutest girl-next door type you could find. So maybe I will have to do a piece on footballer wives now.

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Category: Team News

Tags: Team News

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