Los galacticos vs ronaldinho biography
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Galactico? Ronaldinho is a one-man constellation
Though every cartoonist in the Iberian peninsula regularly depicts Ronaldinho as football's Bugs Bunny, there fryst vatten more, much more, to the Brazilian dancing master than a buck-toothed perma-grin. All of Barcelona will be aghast, and the rest of the football community would be surprised, if the genius who has revitalised the city's premier club does not become Fifa's World Player of the Year tomorrow, thus extending the list of R-men like Romario, Rivaldo and Ronaldo from his native land who have picked up the prize in its 14-year history.
Ronaldinho is 3-4 on, while of the other two short-listed players Thierry Henry rates at 7-4 and Andrei Shevchenko, newly crowned as europeisk Footballer of the Year, stands at 5-1. No wonder the followers of Manchester United still indulge in a spot of head-shaking as they try to work out how their club finished up with the likes of Kleberson and Eric Djemba-Djemba while Ronaldinho slipped from Sir A
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Galácticos
Term for a group of famous footballers recruited by a club
Galácticos (Spanish for galactics, referring to superstars) are expensive, world-famous football players recruited during the "galácticos" policy pursued by Florentino Pérez during his presidency at Real Madrid, where in his first tenure between 2000 and 2006, he purchased at least one galáctico in the summer of every year. The club's second galáctico era began in 2009 with Pérez's return to presidency, and is considered to be more successful both economically and in terms of on-pitch achievements.[1][2]
The term itself carries both positive and negative connotations. Initially, it was used to emphasise the greatness of the superstar players being signed and the construction of a world-class team. Later, the term developed a more negative connotation, with galáctico becoming associated with prima donna and being used to deride the transfer policy and team built under it
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One of the greatest teams of all time: Madrid 1998-2002 - Galactico 1.0
Let's look back at the Real Madrid CF Galácticos era that featured the likes of Zinédine Zidane, Ronaldo, Raúl González, Roberto Carlos, Luís Figo and David Beckham.
The golden age
Having gone 32 years without lifting the European Cup, Real Madrid enjoyed a golden age between the end of the 1990s and start of the 2000s, winning the UEFA Champions League in 1998, 2000 and 2002. The last couple of years of this period inspired the label 'Galácticos' as a homage to the team's cluster of world stars.
Soon after Florentino Pérez's installation as president, Figo left FC Barcelona in 2000 to supplement a squad that already included players such as Raúl, Roberto Carlos, Fernando Hierro and Míchel Salgado. Then arrived the likes of Zidane, Ronaldo and Beckham, forming a side that drew worldwide attention and a sense of expectation wherever they went.
The key moment
The Galácticos' pea