In surely the most spiteful football transfer of the modern era, Luis Figo set a world-record fee of £37.4m on July 24, 2000 when heading to Real Madrid from Barcelona.
It was suggested at the time that the Portuguese didn’t actually want to follow through with the move but, having allowed third parties to negotiate with Florentino Perez on his behalf, he was effectively backed into a corner.
Perez, in flexing all of his political and financial muscle, probably didn’t need to sign the player either, but he did so because he could, and thereby laid down a marker for the Galactico era that was to follow.
In the lead up to Real’s presidential elections, his offer of payment of every Real Madrid member’s fees for a year if he couldn’t capture Figo was, evidently, enough to get him first past the post.
It captured the hearts and minds of the Madrid faithful and the man had cojones certainly.
In order to convince Figo, Perez had sought the services of Paulo Futre. West Ham fans will remember him fondly when he was part of Harry Redknapp’s ‘United Nations’ side, but in his home country Futre had attained god-like status.
It’s small wonder that a relatively clueless Figo was the rat to his Pied Piper and went along with the negotiations fairly nonchalantly.
The agreement was thus; If Perez won the election and Figo failed to move, the Portuguese would have to pay a penalty of 5 billion pesetas which is roughly about €26m in new money.
If Perez failed, Figo would keep what amounted to €2.3m today.
With everything more or less agreed and not one media outlet having got whiff of it, the £37.4m buyout clause was paid at the Spanish Football Federation by the president-elect.
Figo even had the temerity to deny any knowledge of the same when it became common knowledge, but had he fronted up things would’ve been even worse for him in Barcelona than they eventually turned out to be.
With a presidential election coincidentally required at the Camp Nou during the same summer, and the player also looking for an upgrade in salary, it was impossible to definitively satisfy his economical yearnings at the time because no one involved in negotiations yet held the position of president – and could therefore not ensure any promises would be kept.
Another small victory for Perez - which also is what his victorious run to the presidency at the Santiago Bernabeu turned out to be. Just a few hundred votes more than his nearest rival, hardly a landslide.
Though the 2002 El Clasico is the one most remembered since, as it featured a pig’s head thrown from the stands in Figo’s direction, his first game back in Catalonia after his transfer was the most vicious.
Never had there been an atmosphere like it at a football game with bricks, bottles and the like coming within inches of the player.
It’s as dangerous a 90 minutes as Figo’s ever likely to have taken part in.
Happy anniversary!
