Sports Burst - Real Madrid Ride the Storm
Real Madrid's fancy finances expected to ride economic storm in LaLiga as Barcelona seek to take money away from Messi.
by Tim Stannard/beIN SPORTS
Less transfer spend and cut-price players are key to Real Madrid currently surviving fierce financial future in LaLiga
Monday sees some explanation in the Spanish press as to how Real Madrid are set to ride the financial storm hitting the entire Spanish game. It is down a rather basic premise - Real Madrid has more money because it spends less.
Marca reports that Madrid currently has $171 million in the bank which is a handy nest egg when there is no income. This total has partly been accumulated by Real Madrid's net spend in the transfer market is around $70m less than Barcelona over the past three years.
First team players such as Fede Valverde and Vinicius Junior are considerably less burden on the budget than Antoine Griezmann. Indeed, while Barcelona's percentage of salary cost compared to the overall budget is a reported 80%, Real Madrid is a less arduous 50%.
In a week where the Barcelona board will be going into battle against the first team, Real Madrid will be taking pride in having beaten Barcelona both in a sporting Clasico and a Clasico of the accounts.
There will be more on this on the Sports Burst live show at 12PM ET on the beIN SPORTS USA Facebook page, the beIN SPORTS Youtube channel and the XTRA channel. Today, our Gabrielle Amado and Ray Hudson are bringing the noise.
Transfer values of all players set to drop over a quarter
Staying on the topic of finances, Real Madrid will not be completely immune from the challenges of a shutdown of sport due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The CIES Football Observatory, a group that regularly dabbles in the economics of soccer, is claiming in a new report that if no soccer is played until the end of June in Europe and contracts are not extended or altered in this time then the average transfer value of a player will fall by 28%.
In an equation factoring in age, length of contract, amount of games played, being any good this year and zodiac sign, the group has decided that the value of Real Madrid and Barcelona's player portfolio will drop by 31%.
However, the good news is that Paul Pogba will potentially be worth roughly half of what he is now and a snip at $38 million.
Speaking of French footballers losing value, Karim Benzema has done his best to reduce the worth of fellow French striker Olivier Giroud.
As a reminder, Benzema is currently out of the reckoning for the French national side - for reasons waaaaaay too complicated and non-family friendly to get into here - and has been a little sniffy about this by comparing himself and Giroud to a Formula 1 car and a go-kart in an online chat.
Wimbledon 2020 expected to be canceled
Time to end now with a combination of Cancellation Corner and the Reorganization Room.
Beginning with the former and the Wimbledon organizers are expected to completely cancel the 2020 edition of the tennis competition which was due to start on June 29th.
That hint came from the Vice President of the German Tennis Federation, Dick Hordoff, who says that a formal announcement is expected on Wednesday after a meeting.
The end of June is thought to be too early to have Wimbledon ready due to the coronavirus and holding the tournament any later in the year is problematic due to the combination of more inclement weather and grass courts.
Meanwhile, a tentative start date for the reorganized Olympic Games is July 22rd 2021.
UEFA is reportedly giving a thumbs up to domestic soccer seasons in Europe ending as late as August. What to do with the start of the following campaign is the next problem. But one at a time.
This flies directly in contrast with the wishes of Tottenham striker, Harry Kane, who was unusually forceful over the weekend wanting a closure of the Premier League season if it could not be completed by the end of June.