Real confirm van Nistelrooy signing

Real Madrid have confirmed Ruud van Nistelrooy has signed a contract with the club.

For a club of Real Madrid‘s stature, going three years without securing any silverware is tantamount to a crisis.

While arch-rivals Barcelona have gone from strength to strength, winning consecutive Primera Liga titles and topping that off with Champions League glory last season, Real, the most successful club in Spain, have resembled a club without direction and leadership since 2003.

With their ageing galacticos failing to do the business on the pitch and a raft of changes occurring in the boardroom and among the coaching staff, it came as no real surprise to see the club go through such a lean patch.

It was generally agreed that major surgery was needed this summer if the club was going to arrest its slide, and star playmaker Zinedine Zidane‘s decision to retire after the World Cup brought this more into focus.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. The first priority was finding a new coach to replace the hapless Juan Ramon Lopez Caro, who left the Bernabeu at the end of last season.

Lopez Caro had been the fourth coach in the last three years, with president after president happy to wield the axe in search of a short-term fix.

In a quest for some stability, they plumped once again for Fabio Capello, who won the Primera Liga title in the 1996-97 season in his first spell as Real coach.

The fans had been promised Capello by Ramon Calderon, the club‘s latest president who also vowed – like all new supremos do – to bring in a handful of stellar players to boost the team.

The likes of Arjen Robben, Cesc Fabregas and Kaka were said to be on Calderon‘s shopping list. He has failed to land those names but he has lured no-nonsense centre-back Fabio Cannavaro and central midfielder Emerson from Juventus, and now striker Ruud van Nistelrooy from Manchester United.

The trio will form the spine of this season‘s line-up and provide the team with some much-needed backbone.

With Iker Casillas, Michel Salgado, Sergio Ramos, Roberto Carlos, David Beckham, Guti, Raul, Ronaldo and Robinho still there and with something to prove, Capello‘s squad is now easily as competitive and talented as Barcelona‘s.

And with the start of the season still a month away, there may even be more signings to come.

The squad has been bolstered in the right areas. Cannavaro, arguably the player of the World Cup in Germany, will provide Real with the imposing presence at the back they have lacked since the days of Fernando Hierro in his pomp.

Emerson will perform the shielding job that the likes of Guti, Pablo Garcia and Thomas Gravesen have failed to carry out successfully in recent years and Van Nistelrooy‘s goalscoring exploits at United are well documented.

Both Robinho and Ramos performed well at the World Cup and will be hoping to excel in their second seasons at the club, and the signing of Van Nistelrooy might bring the best out of Raul and Ronaldo, who have struggled to sparkle in recent campaigns.

Capello‘s track record suggests he will bring the glory days back to the Bernabeu, and the club‘s fans will go into the new season with a renewed sense of optimism with him on board.

However, removing Barca‘s vice-like grip on the domestic proceedings will not be straightforward and snatching the title from the enemy would go down as one of the best achievements of Capello‘s career.