TF90M's columnist Tim Sansom reasons with the ludicrous amount of money Spanish giants Real Madrid are prepared to pay for Cristiano Ronaldo.
I am not sure why, but I seem to be the person that is dragged off the street by market researchers to seek my views on a key issue. I seem to wear a face, which says ‘please survey me. I am doing nothing all afternoon, and I am dying to voice my views for one of your surveys.’ Despite my best efforts to be assertive, it does not take much for me to be dragged off the street to fill in another long questionnaire, for the ‘prize’ of a cheap biro.
For some reason, the surveyors of Ipswich and Derby seem to be particularly interested in my thoughts and I am usually asked to comment on a new TV advert that will be on your screens in the coming months. It has got to the stage that pre-match entertainment at Pride Park feels incomplete if I am not filling out a survey in Derby’s dreary Assembly Rooms.
I am usually watching an advert for alcohol, and I am usually forced to fill in a series of random and vague questions. I am always offered some tepid tea that tastes of liquorice, but has been lovingly poured by the eternally grateful surveyors. However, I do feel that I have done my little bit for queen and country, when I walk out with my new biro!
During one of these surveys, I was asked to comment on a new advert from the credit card operative, which likes to think that some things in life are absolutely priceless. It had been a bad wet Monday and I was not in the best of moods. Whilst the surveyor was taking the opportunity to rest her tired legs on a fake pine chair, I was venting my spleen about their advert. I was being totally irrational.
I hated every single second of this sequence including the tingly music, the dull characters and the arrogant voiceover, and I did not hold back from my views. I suggested that this was probably the worst advert that I had ever seen but it seemed to make no difference. The advert was on TV within a couple of weeks, and I felt that the survey was a total waste of time. I still hated the advert. Could anything really be priceless?It has been suggested to me that Manchester United and Cristiano Ronaldo have become inseparable. Ronaldo (with Rooney) has been priceless to United and the reds would not be the same without him. The same argument was made when the great players finished their Old Trafford careers such as Hughes, Beckham, Keane and Robson.
They appreciate his talents but I have never met a Manchester United fan who is that starry-eyed about Cristiano Ronaldo. They recognise that he has been a fantastic servant to Old Trafford, and a key player within the team. It may have been the circles that I move in, but I could sum up their attitude in one shrug: These fans say, “if he wants to go, let him go.”It seems as if he has left in some style. I can not get my head around the concept of £80 million. Maths is not my strongest trait and I am struggling to visualise eighty million pounds in crisp £10 notes. How many suitcases could hold the money? Would I be able to spend eighty million pounds? I could buy season tickets at my local club for all of my family and friends, and I would still have millions to spare.
Some people will ask whether I think Ronaldo is worth £80 million. It is a pointless question because I can not compare anything else of the same value, apart from some country pads in a Country Life magazine. I could suggest that I would not pay £80 million for a player that sometimes mutates into a grizzly two-year old if he does not get his way.It can make for decent TV when Ronaldo is slumped on the pitch and wining at the referee as if he is looking a bag of dolly mixtures. This petulant side to his personality makes me want to vomit, but I have to realise that he has been one of the most talented footballers in England during recent years. £80 million suggests that he is the closest thing to priceless. All I know is that it is a lot of money beyond mine and most people’s wildest dreams.
I am not blaming Manchester United or Real Madrid for the transfer fee. Some people, including the great Michael Platini think it is over the top in these difficult economic times, but when was anything rational in football? Decades have passed since football made any sense.I can remember the moment when Andy Cole was transferred from Newcastle to United, Alan Shearer was transferred from Blackburn to Newcastle, as well as Rio Ferdinand’s journeys from Upton Park to Elland Road to Old Trafford and the same arguments were made then. There was much comment about how football had lost its moral soul and was about as meaningful as twenty-four hour Big Brother coverage. Nothing changes!
£80 million Cristiano Ronaldo will waltz back into our lives during the coming seasons, and we will marvel at his various football tricks and goals. What is more important for United is how they spend their new windfall to react to the Barcelona defeat and spur themselves onto their obvious dream of a clean sweep of domestic, European and world glory? If United can achieve their treble, or quadruple, which we know that the club and the manager seem to be craving for, £80 million will be truly priceless bit of business.As for me, I am wondering how long it will be before a player is transferred for £100 million. That player would not be priceless. He would be gold dust!
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