What Exactly Is Our Transfer Policy?

By: Corey | January 29th, 2008

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Opinion Salad Yummm!
When Ramon Calderon took over last year, he promised some high profile signings. I didnt really care to much about that. Sure Fabregas, Kaka and Ronaldo are good players, but did we need all three or even any? Seems like we didnt, hell we dont even really need Robben seeing as how he is always injured. So I want to look at what exactly our transfer policy is.

Obviously we still pay a hefty fee for anyone we buy. Drenthe, Pepe, Robben and Diarra were all way over priced. They are good additions to the squad, players I like, but their value was probably less then half of what their transfer fee ended up being. Is Pepe really worth 30 million? No, maybe 10 or 15, he is has yet to prove much although has had a few promising displays. Why do we pay such a high price for players then? The answer is that we can, which is a two way street.

On one hand we can afford the high prices, but does anyone really want to pay alot for something they could get for cheaper? No, my buddies and I want to get a kegerator for our house, but at $300 base price, we think we might be better off with ice in a bucket. The second aspect of this is we simply can not negotiate fee’s down with other teams because they know we have the money. Then why dont we look some where else? Does not matter where you go, its always gonna be the little guys want the most they can get out of us, and with reason, we usually are buying a teams best player. Not to be cocky, its just small teams like Almeria or Getafe live off transfer fees and loans from big clubs.

So why not buy players for cheap when they are young and integrate that with a competitive youth system? Well thats my feeling, its what I do when ever I play a soccer video game and its what I advise teams do whenever I post on the Offside. Do the big teams listen, no. When you look at the amount of money big clubs put into their youth systems but then compare that to how many of these young players make it to the first team, you wonder why they waste their money and time. Use that money to buy more players!

Buying players is a neccessary evil sometimes, and I can not stand here and say all youth team players should be in the first team at some point, most of the time they are not good enough. But at our current rate, we have a few, but im unsure if Balboa and Soldado will stay much longer, while Torres is solid as can be so no complaint there. The big spending of the Perez era have been scaled back, and I am extremely happy we have three youth team players in the squad this year. But when you look across La Liga and see Negredo doing well for Almeria and De la Red running things from Getafe and Javi Garcia growing at Osasuna and Juan Mata, well he is playing for the crisis team at the moment and Alberto Bueno is sitting in Castilla still. It just pains me to think that this generation of players is gone and they could have been so good. We will always have a good two or three players every year, as evidence with Adrian (on loan at Celta), Parejo (Castilla) and Granero (on loan at Getafe) who all look certain to return to the first team next year just like Balboa and Soldado did.

But the Quatro of Negredo, Bueno, Mata and Soldado is no more, with De la Red, Granero, Balboa and Adrian their supply line. Just imagine in two or three years how incredible such a lineup would be…and think of how much money we would have to spend on transfers…Now you can argue that these players are not good enough for Real, this may be true now, but in two or three years they surely will be. Cesc wasnt good enough for Barca, but with time he is more then good enough at Arsenal. So why are we selling these guys so early, why are they not getting cracks at the first/loans. Christ, half of our youth team players are sold between 19-22. Thats young, very few players are fully matured professionals at that stage. The answer to that question is in this interview along with the future of our transfer policy:

Julen Lopetegui, Real’s chief international scout, discussed Real’s recent scouting missions across the globe and also how the club’s transfer policy may be reshaped to integrate more youth team players:

“Someone like Messi is not manufactured, he appears and that is what clubs must find,”

“We will have to wait and see if Bojan and Giovani are the players everyone things that they will be. There is a lot of impatience.

“Our youth teams are very good and have various stars coming up. There will be some surprises in four years time.

“Brazil exports around 500 professional footbalers every year. You can find some marvellous surprises that nobody has heard of,” he said.

“They are different, not better. Their style is wilder and has to be polished. They are very technical and they can perfect the rest, like in Africa. Our job is to find the unpolished ones.

“We study the players that we have been told about first and we watched them. We do not just go to a country blind and have a look about.

“Our aim is to familiarise ourselves before they become known and the price goes up.”

“Some players have convinced me even though they have played badly,” he continued.

“I look at their technique, their physique and I also look into their psychological side; how they can handle pressure and cope with playing different teams in different positions.

“It is not the same to sign for Osasuna as it is for Real Madrid. To be successful though, you have to take risks.”

“We have to expand our structure. Globalisation has arrived and English footbal has been the pioneer, while in France it has also worked well,” he explained.

“But Spain’s youth system is in good shape. We just lack a bit of confidence and the kids must not believe that by winning a youth championship you have already succeeded.”

“The most important thing is to love football. My family understands me and even my son helps when watching kids’ games on television,” he stated.

“Having played the game also helps, but I do not know if that is vital.”

So is this the case? Spain’s youth teams are feared across Europe and the world, they are on par with Brazil and Argentina, France and Holland etc. and they win lots of trophies at junior level. But what happens after then? Well, at 16 or 19 or 21 they are the best player in Europe or the World or just in a youth tournament. So dont they deserve to be in the first team? Sometimes their attitude is skewed because they stop working as hard, they have already proven to be great youth players, the next step wont be to hard. Or sometimes the clubs they are at simply dont allow them to grow. But I digress.

So we are looking into canidates in Brazil and Africa, with Opare already signed for Castilla along with the Chilean forward Sebastien Pinto and we are close to signing Espnayol and Spain u-19 international Oscar Reyes. We also were suppose to rap up the signing of younf Brazilian attacking midfielder Tiago Luis Martins (1989), but I have read he signed a new contract with Santos, which means any deal has just upped by two digits atleast. And what ever happened to Dani Aquino? He is a stud, would be worth the money.