The Cost of Winning

What is the cost of winning? Every now and then there are a few sports teams that put this question to the test. The Yankees do this annually when they spend lavishly on new players in the off season, despite the fact that the return on this investment has been only two World Series championships in the last decade. Two weekends ago, a soccer game of the highest caliber tested the spend-happy habits of another blockbuster team, and the results were, unsurprisingly, the same.

It was Real Madrid’s turn to host FC Barcelona for their second meeting of the season. The rivalry between the two teams is one of the oldest in the world, only a year younger than the rivalry between the Yankees and the Red Sox but just as fierce, if not more.

Barcelona came into the season with largely the same lineup that won it every accolade it vied for in the previous one, including the prestigious European Champions League trophy and the Spanish league title. On the other hand, during the off-season, Real, furious with its failure to compete with its archrival, spent an unheard of $345 million on six players—one of whom was Cristiano Ronaldo, the 2008 Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Player of the Year.  With such talent bought at such an exorbitant price, Real expected good results right away.

Many things were at stake in this game, apart from the usual pride that comes from winning “El Clásico,” as the match is called. Whoever won would jump ahead in the Spanish league title hunt, as the teams were tied in the league standings going into the game. The game would also pit an in-form Ronaldo—a player that cost Real a $130 million transfer fee alone—against Barcelona’s current golden boy, Lionel Messi, who was just coming off a four-goal performance against English powerhouse Arsenal Football Club.

Most importantly, the game would allow Real to see what progress their lucrative investment in Ronaldo had yielded.

Unsurprisingly, it was Messi, who struck first against Real, carefully chesting down a lob pass before tucking it away past the goalie in front of a suddenly quiet Real crowd.  Then it was forward Pedro Rodriguez who sealed the deal for the visitors, taking the Real defense by surprise and slamming the ball home. As Barcelona celebrated its victory it became apparent that the match had proved, once again, that money can’t buy wins.

On the one hand, this seems intuitive. A solid team dynamic, superior coaching, a raucous home crowd, or a host of other auxiliary factors on one side can overcome an immense collection of pure talent on the other. Nevertheless, this doesn’t stop monied teams in professional sports leagues around the world, from Real Madrid to the Yankees, from making more of an effort to recruit and satisfy expensive star athletes instead of focusing on more foundational efforts. The failures of these efforts are often blamed on the once-touted athletes themselves, but instead, the overall strategy should be questioned. The “cost of winning” is a facetious phrase; seeing the success of a sports team in terms of money, whether dollars or euros, is simplistic.

At the very least, if a team spends its efforts wooing big-name players, it must do so with cautious, long-term expectations. The New York Knicks, my dearly beloved hometown team, is ready to splash money around in this summer’s upcoming free-agent market. But perhaps a marquee player like LeBron James is not the sole answer to their problems, just as Cristiano Ronaldo is not a panacea for Real Madrid’s issues. A sports team is, after all, a team, and to pin championship hopes on the individual efforts of star players is a characteristic, easy, and frustrating mistake.

Brian A. Campos ’12, a Crimson associate sports editor, is a neurobiology concentrator in Kirkland House.