The first galactico of the Florentino Perez era at Real Madrid, Portugal star Luis Figo, compared the last few years at the Spanish club to a circus in an interview with Spanish newspaper Marca on Wednesday.
”If the most important thing in your project is to make a circus then you have a lot less chance of achieving sporting success, which is actually the most important thing,” said the Inter Milan midfielder.
”The beginning of the end came after the first three years [of Perez’s reign] when, rather than following a sporting policy, the club pursued a commercial one. They took care of the commercial side and not the sporting one. From the third year they recruited for the sake of recruiting. There was no sporting objective, there were other priorities.”
Figo was not only the first galactico to arrive, in 2000, but also the first to be shown the door when he left Madrid for Inter Milan in the last close-season.
Perez followed up the signing of Figo by adding another galactico each year with Frenchman Zinedine Zidane arriving in 2001, Brazilian Ronaldo in 2002, Englishmen David Beckham in 2003 and Michael Owen in 2004 and another Brazilian Robinho in 2005.
”Ask the fans of Real Madrid if it is more important to win every Sunday and become champions of La Liga or to be on tour for 15 or 20 days behaving like the [Harlem] Globe Trotters,” added Figo, making reference to Madrid’s yearly and lucrative promotional tours to Asia. — Sapa-AFP