Florentino Perez believes Bale will prove worth it.
Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has boasted that Gareth Bale was ‘cheap’ and says the Welshman’s arrival makes good business sense for the club.
Bale joined Los Blancos from Tottenham for a reported world record fee of £86m last month.
Various figures have criticised the deal, with Barcelona boss Tata Martino claiming the fee showed a “lack of respect”.
Real have since claimed they paid £76m – just short of the £80m spent on Cristiano Ronaldo – rather than a record fee but, in an interview with radio station Cadena Ser, Perez refused to confirm Bale’s price but insisted the 23-year-old would prove good value for money.
“[Bale] was cheap,” Perez said.
“I have not said the amount. Every time there is talk of figures, the figures which someone wants to come out are those that come out. Madrid’s model is the model of Santiago Bernabeu – to have the best players.
“That produces an important effect, both sporting and economic. I have already showed this, as in the year 2000 Madrid was in a bad situation losing money. And signing [Luis] Figo, [Zinedine] Zidane and [David] Beckham, even though they were very expensive, we started making money. That is a model which works in business, and in football, which is also a business.”
Perez claimed that signing big stars, known as Galacticos, helps Real to improve their own credit with sponsors and claimed all Real’s big signings, even Kaka, have been worth it.
“When we signed Zidane for a very big amount of money – about €75 million – we changed from Teka who paid us 400 [million pesetas] to Siemens who paid us 4,000,” he said. “That was because of Zidane. Kaka was Adidas, and Cristiano [Ronaldo] was Nike.
“[Having Kaka] helped us to renew our contract with Adidas, in a very important way. It is true that we had bad luck from a sporting perspective, above all he was injured at the World Cup the next year and from there he did not give the sporting performance we expected, but from the financial point of view he helped us a lot.
“All these players [the galacticos] helped us to grow from €100 million in revenues to more than €500 million.”
And Perez is in no doubt that Bale will prove worth his weight in gold.
“Bale has twice been named the best player in the Premier League, he was the image of the Premier League, the trademark player,” he said.
“I believe he is one of the great players in the world and that Real Madrid have this model.”
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