It is not only observers of what used to be called "the people's game" who might think the sport has gone mad, with the payment of so much money for a 24-year-old human being who could tweak a tendon, lose his form or fail to settle in Madrid. Spain's secretary of state for sport, Miguel Cardenal, last week told Sid Lowe, Spanish football correspondent for the Guardian, that Real Madrid ought to explain how this extravagant acquisition can possibly make sense in a country suffering economic depression and 26 percent unemployment.The club itself declined to comment until the deal, mooted and negotiated all summer after Bale's sensational last season for Spurs, is concluded. A spokesman told the Observer: "Bale is not a Real Madrid player, so we don't talk about it."Yet Real Madrid's president, the construction magnate Florentino Prez, who has a policy of signing gal‡cticos (hugely expensive players) has long argued that fielding these massive stars makes sense, and that they justify their outlay in earnings and "brand" status for the club.
Many in football, watching Real dominate this summer's football media, believe the club wants as much to make an emphatic statement about its scale and power as have Bale in the actual team.In Bale's projection from youth team colt at Southampton to football's most valuable modern commodity lies the story of the sport's modern commercial development, which almost exactly spans his 24 years. The single most important boon since the early 1990s to what was already the world's best-loved and most popular spectator sport has been the advent of pay television.In England, Spain and Europe's other major football leagues, subscription TV managed not only to multiply the biggest clubs' incomes overnight by having their own country's fans paying to watch live matches; crucially, satellite began to broadcast European football live around the globe.
