Ronaldo signs for Hearts (I wish)

Post #4

So Cristiano Ronaldo has been presented at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu stadium this week in front of a capacity 80,354 crowd after finalising the world record transfer of 80 million pounds (I don't have the pound sign on this North American laptop). The Real Madrid President, Florentino Perez wants to return to the Galacticos era where the world's best players play for the club. They have already signed Kaka for 56 million pounds and will no doubt sign more.

It's a risky move since the last Galacticos ended in some success and lots o failure. For example, the club refused to pay defenders the same level of salary as the attacking players and this saw the departure of Makelele from the last Galacticos team to Chelsea when David Beckham arrived at the club. Ironically, at this point Real Madrid stopped winning silverware and Chelsea started.

But the really interesting point about this week's event is the number of fans that turned up to see a young man put the strip on and juggle a few balls about. 80,354. What did they expect to see? Off their heads, the lot of them.

The nearest we've had in Scotland was when Dalglish returned to parkhead as Director of football for Celtic. About 100 people turned cheering, shouting and, probably drinking Tennents Super by the way pal. It was a similar scene when Celtic were in dire straits about a decade ago and the fans were screaming for the Board to be sacked. This happened on a regular basis and the great unwashed (literally in some cases - soap dodging beggers) of Glasgow's East End would gather outside the main stand chanting and singing and drinking more Tennents Super. Young BBC reporters would be dispatched to get a sense of the atmosphere and interview some of the fans for that night's tele and be talked at by the assembled hords.

The same thing happened in Newcastle (and is probably happening now - Richard, comments?) but nothing in quite the same numbers as the mad Spaniards.

I suppose I'm just jealous. Hearts could afford to borrow Ronaldo for a week let alone buy him and even if we could he wouldn't come. Who would want to play in front of (barely) 18,000 fans on a wet Thursday night against Hamilton in the League Cup...and lose. This is why Kaka rejected Man City's bid to land him. Not that they play Hamilton but you get my drift. No, Hearts have other problems to deal with, mounting debt, a tiny wee stadium and a Lithuanian owner who fancies himself as the manager and makes a roaring arse of it in the process. I wish we had a stadium that was capable of holding anywhere near 80,000 people. The closest we have come is using Murrayfield (60,000) for European games and barely managing to fill half of it.

No, us Jambos will have to make do with what we've got and aim for finishing 3rd in the league...the closest we'll ever get to winning the league.

Peter