I thought Real Madrid was in some kind of financial trouble before they got Figo from Barca. A year later, they got Zidane followed by Ronaldo...Now their target is on the most valued player in the world, Beckham just one question.... where the hell is the money coming from????
They sold their training ground to the local council for $100 million. The local council then built them a new training ground for free. This apparently cleared their financial debts... hhhmmm sounds like a dubious way of shifting funds. I dont know if they still have debts.... But they had a load of debt cleared by the deal with the council... They also get favours from spanish banks so I;ve heard.
"In the Champions League glory for the clubs goes hand-in-hand with financial success: last year Real Madrid pocketed an enormous £25.3million in winnings for lifting the European Cup" (note: that's in pounds) .They won it in 1998, 2000 and 2002 ($$$) .Semifinal in 2001 ($$) .Ronaldo's transfer sum was pretty much paid by the sales of his shirts .Sale of their training ground In Holland it's becoming pretty much normal these days for the (district) government to buy the grounds to let the clubs play in them for a cheaper price.
That was Franco. Real was the team of Franco's facsist government during the 50's. But Franco died 30 years ago, it's totally irrelevant now.
LOL By the way, Real Madrid has sold their training ground to some private companies.Council did permit this operation,but money comes from private companies. Then,Madrid is going to build another training ground(not for free,LOL) Key is this:Current Madrid's training ground is in the best side of Madrid.His value is tremendous.
Is Beckham the most valued player in the world? He's certainly not the best, so what exactly do you mean?
While there are better players than Beckham, no player (except maybe for Ronaldo) is more famous. Beckham gives you a good midfielder as well as a marketing goldmine. SRM: The armchair fans know that the training ground was built in an area that was used for orchards at the time of construction, about a mile north of the Bernabeu, which is at the center of one of the most valuable real estate areas in Madrid. Madrid has expanded mostly north in the last half century, and the training ground is now located on very expensive land. I believe the City of Madrid actually paid slightly less than $300m for it, and paid for the construction of 4 skyscrapers, one at each corner. The club owns 2 of these, the city owns 1, and they share the final one.
So the city benefits a lot from the deal, instead of the city supporting the club with public taxes; besides, the part of the training grounds that isn't used to build the towers becomes public ground and is destined to a park and a sports pavillion.
http://www.abc.es/contenidos/data/hoy/madrid/web_3.jpg the smallest of the four planned towers. This was designed by Spanish architect Ruben Carvajal and is apparently the largest Foucalt's Pendulum (not an architecture person) in the world. Norman Foster and I.M. Pei will be involved in designing the other towers. Pei's design http://usuarios.lycos.es/rascacielos/50ab45d0.jpg http://www.el-mundo.es/elmundo/2001/graficos/mayo/semana1/ciudad.html has an animated diagram of the development, in Spanish. The layout it shows is slightly different than what I had heard. At least one of the towers will be taller than all skyscrapers previously built in Spain. All parties involved are probably going to make a lot of money. Look at the links before saying that the City of Madrid isn't getting a lot out of this deal.