This week we got an astonishing insight into the scale of the Ronaldo ego. The website Football Leaks published what it said was a copy of a document detailing the contractual requirements when Gareth Bale was signed by Real Madrid from Tottenham Hotspur in 2013.
The leak has provoked considerable anger both at the clubs involved and with the player’s representatives. However, there is one thing about their fuming discontent – nobody is denying that this is the genuine article. It is not the detailed vertiginous scale of the figures revealed that is embarrassing those intimately involved.
However bloated, the sums are not apparently anything to be bashful about. What is far more uncomfortable is the degree to which Ronaldo was placed at the core of negotiations which ostensibly had nothing to do with him.
His ego sprinkled egg shells across the conference room floor, around which discussions had to be delicately led. Even as they concluded the deal to bring Bale to the Bernabeu, Real’s senior negotiators were acutely aware of what effect it might have on their star man’s self-esteem. The Bale documents underline how determined Real were to massage the ego of Ronaldo.
For four years since they signed him from Manchester United he had been the undisputed most expensive player in history. And here were his very employers in a position to push him into second place by paying more for Bale. From the start, his feelings were paramount: Tottenham were told no fee could exceed the €96m forked out when Ronaldo joined from Manchester United in 2009.
Tottenham’s Daniel Levy, however, is rarely shy when it comes to money matters. And the documents reveal that when Real sought to pay in instalments, he pushed the price up to €100,759,418.
The Spaniards reluctantly agreed, on one condition – Spurs’ and Bale’s representatives would go along with the line that he cost €91m, comfortably below Ronaldo’s record fee. Given the extent to which their bank accounts were about to be swollen, it seemed churlish not to agree to the deception.
So it is that, since he arrived in Spain, the public have been routinely informed that Bale was cheaper than Ronaldo. Thus the Portuguese’s sense of self-worth remained uncompromised. Until now!
What is extraordinary about the leak is not the fee so much as what it tells us about the scale and influence of the Ronaldo ego. We know that the contracts of footballers are governed by all sorts of issues concerning things like image rights. What was less appreciated was the degree to which third-party feelings can impinge on the process.
As he does most things, Bale comes out of the whole sorry story rather well. Unencumbered by such debilitating self-image, he did not appear to mind that no one knew he was, in fact, the most expensive footballer ever.
He was just thrilled to be playing at Real.
