Why Real Madrid Would Be Mad to Sell

Florentino Perez has always liked to stress the point that Real Madrid stands alone in world football. Listen to the club's president often enough and you'll hear remarks on Real's grandeur, its pulling power, the club's global might and talk of the impossible being made possible.

In fact, Perez loves to talk about that last one: the impossible. Doing it, precisely. He's got an obsession with it, as though it's a declaration that Real Madrid, under his watch, won't conduct itself like any other club on the planet. 

He spoke of it in July at a graduation event, at the club's annual general meeting in 2013, at Isco's unveiling earlier that year and during the club's preseason in the United States a year earlier.

It's become a mantra, a rallying cry. And either he believes he's Ethan Hu (his presidency has actually followed a similar curve to the Mission: Impossible franchise, if you believe IMDb's ratings: He started out strong, quickly went downhill, endured a hiatus, came back stronger and now looks set to continue) or simply owns a desire to shape world football like no club administrator ever has before.

What's fascinating, though, is that it appears likely Perez will face a decision in the next six-to-eight months that will challenge his conviction in his own mantra: whether or not to sell Gareth Bale.

If the situation of an offer eventuates—and if there's any truth to the report from Guillem Balague at AS that Manchester United are prepared to pay £120 million for Bale next summer, it looks as if it will—Perez's mind will be flooded with questions. What exact figure could I get for the Welshman? Does it make financial sense? How many players could I buy with the sale fee? Can Bale be replaced? If I sold him, what would it mean for our future? Our legacy? My legacy?

But perhaps the two biggest questions for him would be these: Would selling go against our identity as a club under my presidency? Would accepting something like £120 million be an act of giving in to football's financial realities, rather than pursuing the impossible?

Now Perez is a bit of a mad guy—he once said that Bale, who arrived for £85.3 million, came "cheaply." But he'd be a bona fide nutter if he were to sell Bale to UnitedBut it seems approximately 16,125 Real Madrid fans have forgotten that—the number who formed the 53 percent of 30,000 voters who said in an AS poll that the club should sell Bale if United makes an offer of £120 million.

This is a player who's already the closest thing world football has to another Ronaldo (think of the pace, power, shooting ability, free-kicks, aerial prowess and technical proficiency). And he's a guy who's spent his days intimately watching Ronaldo, training with him, playing with him and copying him. What do you think the results of that are going to be?

Bale is also a guy who's progressed from being a left-back at Tottenham to a rampant forward at Real Madrid in three years. He's a guy who's had a hand in 55 goals in less than two seasons operating as a second or third option. He's the guy who scored that goal at the Mestalla.

You don't do those things if you're not outrageously good. And Bale is that good.

Selling superstars is fraught with dangers: It's risky business at the best of times. Selling the heir to Ronaldo's throne would just be mad. And it's not how Perez will chase the impossible. .


Source http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2309975-why-real-madrid-would-be-mad-to-sell-gareth-bale