In this country, new Real Madrid coach Julen Lopetegui is partially famous for having fainted, flat out, on live TV in 2006 while demonstrating Spain’s World Cup formation via the new invention of touch-screen graphics. It’s to be hoped that Lopetegui’s reaction to Cristiano Ronaldo dramatically sealing his move away from the Bernabeu to Juventus didn’t result in anything similar Tuesday. But make no mistake, all eyes are trained on the Basque-born manager once again.
Did Lopetegui knowingly sign up for a Ronaldo-less Madrid? To what extent was he briefed, while setting himself up to lose the Spain job on the eve of the World Cup, that Real Madrid’s greatest asset was about to be flogged off — for a price that might buy Neymar’s right leg? Either he knew, and has been planning for this moment from Day 1, or he was in the dark and is now feeling monumentally betrayed. I’d bet on the former.
Lopetegui, and the task in front of him, forms just one of the ripples Ronaldo’s big splash has set in action in this pond. Gareth Bale, Lionel Messi, La Liga president Javier Tebas, Karim Benzema, Diego Simeone, Antoine Griezmann, Sergio Ramos, Ernesto Valverde, Jan Oblak, the men in charge of transfer strategies at Valencia and Sevilla, and, oh yes, Real Madrid president Florentino Perez: All of these main players on the Spanish football scene will be directly affected by Ronaldo’s departure, never mind the marketeers, sponsors, advertisers and television-rights holders. Absolutely no one who cares about football is untouched by this. It’s that significant.