Showman Perez gets Real at last

This time, there were no easy labels; no slick slogans. The hope at Real Madrid, however, is that it’s all finally a lot less superficial than that.

It was around this point in 2001, a year on from the grand unveiling of the Galactico project, that president Florentino Perez announced its evolution: ‘Zidanes y Pavones’. The concept was that the club’s lavish expenditure on stars would be balanced by the promotion of young players, simultaneously promoting two important historic pillars of the club.

Perez hasn’t dared use the same type of words this summer, but the club have broadly acted in a similar way.

While a box-office name like Gareth Bale has been very publicly targeted, Real have also been busy signing up youngsters like Isco, Dani Carvajal and, yesterday, Asier Illarramendi for €39.3 million. Their swiftness has surprised the Spanish market.

Even if Perez is attempting an upgrade on the 2001 policy, however, it is those specific purchases that suggest some of the lessons of the past have been learned. The big problem before was that there was a greater gap between the Zidanes and the Pavones than just status.

Francisco Pavon, who the plan was named after, has recently been drawing the dole in Spain. That absence of required ability was also reflected in their salaries. While Zidane was inevitably earning around €6m a year, the youth players were on around €150,000. All of the marketing gimmicks couldn’t bridge that massive chasm in quality.

The combined expenditure of €80m on Isco and Co. illustrates that is far from an issue this summer. More importantly, the absence of a label for their purchases may actually signify the club restoring a true sense of identity.

That has been one of the curiosities of the modern Real Madrid. For all their fame as one of the greatest names in world football, they have lacked true definition as a team over the past decade or so.

That couldn’t have been said about Barcelona, with Real suffering a nadir as Pep Guardiola’s team rose to a peak. Even worse, Barca’s superb youth system meant they came to ironically dominate Madrid’s previous preserve of the national team.

The arrivals of Isco, Carvajal and Illarramendi mean that over 50% of Real’s first-team squad is Spanish for the first time since 2003-04, while they were all part of the country’s recent U21 European Championship-winning squad. It is a timely injection of both youth and national flavour.

Given how far the club’s standing has fallen in media polls after all the controversy of the Jose Mourinho era, that is part of a concerted attempt to improve their image — Perez cannot completely change his ways.

It is not just about nationality or perceptions, though. The Spanish trio all fill important positions in the panel, and have more than the quality to go with them.

Should someone like Bale be signed alongside those players, rather than instead of them, Real would probably have a more complete squad than at any point since 2002.

Moreover, all of this comes in a promising summer. Just as Real begin to unite again, Barca are seeing a lot of loose threads under the difficult reign of president Sandro Rosell.

At the very least, it gives Real a greater chance of recovering the most important label of them all: champions.