thoughts or comments about the book, please feel free to email me at my Columbia Business School email: [email protected]. I can’t promise that I will respond to every message, but I can promise you that I will read each one.
1 A.T. Kearney White Paper, The Sports Market.
2 Fabio López, a successful asset manager from Madrid that married a close family friend and then became a close friend himself, had set up the 2014 meeting with Carlos. Fabio knows Carlos because Fabio’s father, Pedro López Jímenez, is on the board of directors of Real Madrid. I am an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, after having worked in finance for more than twenty years. Fabio and Pedro thought Carlos and I would enjoy speaking together and that Carlos would be a great guest speaker for a popular Columbia University Business School class that I teach in Madrid for one week each January.
3 The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) is the administrative body for association football (soccer) in Europe and organizes the competition. It is one of six continental confederations of the world soccer’s governing body, Féderation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).
4 I remember first hearing the word or idea of “galácticos” a few days after my seventh birthday in May 1977 when my soccer-loving father, who had immigrated to the United States from Greece, took my older brother Dean and me to Chicago’s Soldier Field to watch a North American Soccer League game between the Chicago Sting and the New York Cosmos with its star “galácticos” players: Brazilians Pelé, Carlos Alberto, and German Franz Beckenbauer.
5 My family and I had moved from New York to Madrid for approximately six months in 2013 to immerse ourselves in Spanish culture and improve our Spanish. While living in Madrid, we attended one Real Madrid regular season game together. I am a very enthusiastic fan of the city of Madrid, its people, and its culture, but no one would call me a hard-core Real Madrid fan. I don’t own any Real Madrid merchandise. I am equally delighted to see Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, Getafe, or Rayo Vallecano win because my friends in Madrid typically root for one of the local teams.
6 Billy Beane is an advisor to Dutch professional soccer team AZ Alkmaar. He also is a part owner in MLS’s San Jose Earthquakes but does not advise the team.
7 In a 2014 interview with Sean Ingle of the Guardian, Billy Beane said, “I’ve got brilliant staff . . . One of my right-hand guys . . . has a PhD in behavioral economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He never played much baseball. Isn’t that a disadvantage? It would be hard to imagine many English clubs doing the same . . . but he has no experience-bias when he comes to my office, so he is able to question the obvious . . . A guy like myself, who has been in the game his entire life, may not be able to spot when the emperor is not wearing any clothes.”
ON THE COOL EVENING of Saturday, May 24, 2014, Real Madrid’s soccer players walk onto the field for the 2014 UEFA Champions League final and look up at a screaming full-capacity crowd of 65,000 in Lisbon, Portugal’s Estádio da Luz (“Stadium of Light”). The world’s most watched annual sporting event is about to air in more than 200 countries, drawing an estimated global audience of 400 million viewers. (To put this into perspective, only an estimated 160 million people worldwide watched the 2014 Super Bowl, 114 million of them in the United States.) The Real Madrid players are dressed in their traditional gleaming white jerseys, the front of which are adorned with “Fly Emirates,” a Real Madrid sponsor’s logo. On the upper-left front of their jerseys, over their hearts, is the club’s famous emblem with a royal crown on top. On the upper-right front is the logo of Adidas, another Real Madrid sponsor. The crest on the left sleeve shows the number of European Cups won by Real Madrid. With the temperature hovering around fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, some of the players have chosen to wear long-sleeved jerseys.
The tournament is referred to as the UEFA Champions League (previously known as the European Cup until it was renamed in 1992) because it is a tournament of the soccer teams that finish in the top few teams of their country’s respective soccer leagues. Real Madrid had last won the competition—their ninth title—in 2002. After over a decade of chasing La Décima (“the tenth”), Real Madrid is ninety minutes away from realizing that goal. Their opponent in the final is cross-city rival Atlético Madrid, wearing their traditional red-and-white striped jerseys. There had been two teams from the same country in the Champions League finals before, but there had never been a Champions League final between two teams from the same city. There was such high demand from Real Madrid’s club members for the tickets the club was allocated by UEFA that the team had to award the tickets by means of a draw. In addition, Real Madrid sold out its 81,044-capacity home-city stadium, Bernabéu Stadium, to Madridistas (a nickname for people who support Real Madrid) to watch the game on big screens.
With a tenth European trophy for Real Madrid or a first for Atlético Madrid at stake, the Madrid versus Madrid battle for the title of best team in Europe—which generally translates as the best team in the world—is historically earth-shattering even before the prime-time kickoff.
Real Madrid’s team of galácticos consists of amazing star players, including Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo,8 who is considered one of the two greatest soccer players in the world (along with Argentine forward Lionel Messi, who plays for rival club Barcelona). Ronaldo’s jersey number is 7, and he is sometimes referred to as CR7. During the 2013–14 season, Ronaldo had truly established himself as one of Real Madrid’s contemporary icons, along with previous galácticos like Zinedine Zidane, Raúl González, and Luís Figo. Ronaldo finished at the top of the Spanish La Liga season’s goal-scorers list with fifty-one goals in forty-seven games—more than one goal per game average is an astonishing statistic. Though it is often overlooked, Ronaldo also contributed nine assists that season to add to his impressive stats. Beyond his good looks, his sculpted body reflects the incredible winning mentality and hard work that he puts into striving to be the best and to set an example for his teammates.
Ronaldo has a fearsome scoring partnership with Welsh winger Gareth Bale and French striker Karim Benzema. Benzema joined Real Madrid in July 2009, one month after Ronaldo, when Real Madrid paid a €35 million ($49 million) transfer fee to French team Lyon, with the fee rising to as much as €41 million ($57 million) including incentives. Before the 2013–14 season started, Real Madrid had paid English team Tottenham €91 million ($120 million) for Bale. The three star players were nicknamed the “BBC” by the Spanish media—for Bale, Benzema, and Cristiano.
The starting lineup of the Real Madrid team that won the 2014 Champions League final. Back row (left to right): Casillas, Ramos, Varane, Khedira, Benzema, Ronaldo. Front row: Di María, Bale, Coentrão, Carvajal, Modrić.
Despite the perception that Madrid simply buys its star players, the goalkeeper for this epic game is Spaniard Iker Casillas, who started his career at the age of eleven in Real Madrid’s youth academy, which is sometimes referred to as La Fábrica (“The Factory”). In 1999, at age eighteen, he was promoted to the first team.9 As the longest-serving member on the team, Casillas was automatically appointed captain during the 2010–11 season. As a product of the Real Madrid development academy, he knew and exemplified the ethos of Real Madrid. In fact seven out of the twenty-five players (28 percent) on the first team in the finals are graduates of the academy. Together they share the spirit, expectations, history, and essence of Real Madrid with the new players.
Real Madrid’s coach that season, Carlo Ancelotti, is well
