Juni Calafat helps Real Madrid sign the best young players in the world He is the ECA chair and even managed to get off free after threatening people following a Champions League exit.īut even as PSG can offer Kylian Mbappe a nearly 300 million euro signing bonus with 90 million euros net in wages (on top of the around combined 100 million euro wages to Neymar and Lionel Messi), they cannot win every battle. PSG showed that FFP does not reach it, as president Nasser Al-Khelaifi essentially controls UEFA. These are clubs that can run nearly one billion euro deficits in spending and wages. Now, it is impossible for Los Blancos to traditionally compete with clubs like PSG and Manchester City. Though Madrid struggled to achieve expectations with an unbalanced squad, Perez created an enduring global brand that, at the time, transformed the transfer market – not just for Real, but for football as a whole. Real Madrid used to be the most powerful club in the world financially, as Florentino Perez’s “Galacticos” marketing campaign proved to be much more successful than the on-field results indicated. Roman Abramovich’s purchase of Chelsea was the first domino to fall in the way state-aligned actors can change the dynamics of the transfer market with almost infinite cash influx, but that was taken to another level by PSG and Manchester City being purchased by Qatar and UAE, respectively.

The face of football is changing – and not for the better.

Real madrid money spent on players