There are some clubs which will always be bigger in stature and status than the rest of the teams in Europe regardless of their recent history. When Florentino Perez took over the reins at Real Madrid for the first time, he brought into the club a revolution. The President inducted into the club a series of super signing known as the “Galacticos”.
Subsequently, that team conquered Europe and more but as the stars aged and faded away, Real lost their edge. In 2008, the club was going through another dip when they decided to turn around their falling standards and re-initiate project “Galactico”.
In came stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, Mesut Ozil, Kaka and Gareth Bale over the next few years and Madrid’s place has been restored to the top of European football. They are currently the defending champions of Europe and it seems this time around Perez is already preparing for the future.
He has seemingly learned from Madrid’s last dip and in order to avoid such a slump again, he wants to act in advance by bringing the future stars of football. In light of such events, it has been reported that Phil Foden of Manchester City has become a target of Real Madrid.
The Citizens have some excellent young players in Brahim Diaz, Phil Foden, Oleksandr Zinchenko and in Guardiola, they have one of the finest tutors of football. However, owing to the quality of City’s first team squad, Foden’s game time will not be guaranteed in his first few years. This might prompt him to move away in search of regular football.
Having said this, it should also be noted that Madrid is hardly the place for anyone to go if they wish to develop. The club only deals with superstars and for a player to get time in Madrid to “develop” is beyond imagination.
It is believed that Perez is looking at Foden to replace Toni Kroos in the long run. The German is now into his fourth year at the club and has developed into not only an integral cog in the team but into one of the finest midfielders in the world at Real Madrid.
The concept of replacing Kroos with Foden is certainly not bad but the application of such a procedure leaves many things to chance. It would be a risk Foden should be unwilling to take given Madrid’s poor history of dealing with young players and the fact that he has a master of football at City to learn the game from.
