Real Madrid: It’s Time to Practice Patience

Being a supporter of Real Madrid has its ups and downs – overall, it’s safe to say that there are more ups than there are downs. Being a fan of the biggest club in the world has its demands and we have seen it in full force over the past couple of seasons, particularly when it comes to the transfer window.

Over the years, we have pleaded for patience – not from ourselves but from the club. We have seen times where Florentino Perez’s actions were too rash for our liking such as when he sacked Carlo Ancelotti or maybe even with the sacking of Julen Lopetegui. We can even go years back and bring up the dismissal of Vicente Del Bosque after he won the UEFA Champions League with the club. The same can be said about how the club has treated certain players such as Theo Hernandez and, to a certain extent so far, Martin Odegaard. We asked them for patience and now, we are the ones who need to be patient.

This isn’t an article in which I feel obligated to tell you how you should act and what you should feel as a Madridista. How you feel depends on you, but one thing that needs to be done by us all is realizing where we are as a club and what the future may or may not hold. We can ask for all the players in the world and get ourselves frustrated because we feel ignored but in the end, the road that the club wants to follow will be followed. It is a road carved by choices and financial restraints with the hope that whatever players are chosen to be bought, choose to join the club as well.

Real Madrid has always been and will always be Real Madrid. No matter how much the state-owned clubs spend, you simply cannot buy history. Even Real Madrid realized this the hard way during the Galacticos era. Money makes you an incredible team but it does not buy you trophies. Even with less money than state-owned clubs, Los Merengues will always lure in players. This isn’t an issue overall but we should not expect them to have the pulling power that they once did.

Players will choose other clubs over us for financial reasons just like many in the past chose Real Madrid over other clubs for the same. Football is ever-changing and no club will have the same influence on the market throughout the course of the sport. Add to that the financial hit the club experienced during the pandemic, things are clearly more difficult. However, even before the pandemic hit, focus clearly shifted for Florentino Perez as he spent big on young players who could shape the future of Real Madrid.

In came Vinicius Junior, Rodrygo Goes, Martin Odegaard, Reinier Jesus, Jesus Vallejo, Eder Militao and Takefusa Kubo. Aside from Odegaard and Militao, these were players who haven’t been tested on a European level, but were spent on heavily to become the faces of the future at the club. The strategy has been going successfully overall. But it was clear since then that the days of consistently purchasing the big names in the market became history and a new future was being prepared by the higher-ups of the club.

During all of this though, Madridistas couldn’t hold back. Can you blame them? Many have grown up being accustomed to watching Real Madrid go for the biggest players in the market, some have joined the bandwagon along with possibly the most successful transfer of all time with Cristiano Ronaldo. It’s difficult to change your perspective when part of the reason you fell in love with the club is that it has names like Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo, Ronaldo, Iker Casillas, David Beckham and many others. You look at the squad now and you can’t help but feel a little disappointed, not because many of them aren’t players deserving of this shirt, but because this was not the club you once loved.

But, what if I told you that it still is that same club?

Regardless of what we see publicly, particularly recently from Florentino Perez, we are talking about a man who always has something brewing in the background. One thing is for certain – the current squad list would not be what it is if it weren’t for the Covid-19 Pandemic. He has been forced to take a step back and re-assess the plans for the club’s future. Even though one of those plans was about the Super League, there are other plans for the club as well. That’s not to say that within the next two years we’ll see players like Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland, but it also doesn’t mean that we won’t.

We need to be patient not only because we don’t really have much of a choice, but because the club has earned it from us. The past couple of years have been difficult and there is only so much certain people can handle before reaching their limit. But just because the team isn’t moving forward with all these big transfers, it doesn’t mean that they don’t want to. Our current squad isn’t the best but it’s good enough to get us through a necessary rebuild that is very meticulously focused on by the decision-makers at the club.

Until then, all we can do is support the team – get excited about the upcoming season, look forward to fans being at the stadium again, be ready to see which player will shine, and most importantly remember this moment because soon, it will have been a lesson learnt that patience truly is a virtue and it leads to even greater successes soon after.

Give it time. Real Madrid are never out of the spotlight for too long.