Obscured amidst Real Madrid’s end-of-season slide is a talented core. It’s a bit of a truism to call Los Blancos talented, but given the negativity that surrounded the club after Barcelona embarrassed them at the Bernabeu and the stampede of willing detractors ready to pile on, it bares reminding: This is club still has elite talent.

Madrid has one of the sport’s best goaltenders: Iker Casillas. In Sergio Ramos, they have one of the world’s best right backs. Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder are amongst the game’s better attacking, wing midfielders. Lassana Diarra (sorry: Lass) spent the winter and spring cementing himself on the short list of the Europe’s best ball-winners.

You would be hard-pressed to name five clubs in world football with a better foundation of talent. Despite their extraordinarily bad May, Madrid has hope.

On Monday, new president Florentino Pérez gave Madridistas a beacon for that hope. Madrid and AC Milan confirmed the transfer of Kaká. Please play along with me as I recite his CV (like you’ve never heard of him).

Kaká is a Brazilian attacking midfielder/forward who won the Ballon d’Or two years ago. That season, he led AC Milan to the UEFA Champions League title, scoring ten goals in fifteen matches along the way. At 27, he has also been a part of teams that have won a World Cup and a Scudetto. In his six years at the San Siro, he scored 70 goals and is recognized as one of the three best footballers in the world.

Clubs do not readily part with players of that caliber, which is why Pérez had to give Milan an offer they could not refuse. Whether the £59 million fee is a record depends on the currency and exchange rate you use. Any way you crunch the number, Milan did not get short-changed. A few Rossoneri supporters may want more, particularly in light of January rumors that had Manchester City willing to pay £100 million for Kaká’s services. Given Kaká’s predilections regarding team (and leaving the San Siro at all), the eye-blowing sum from Madrid justifies itself. There is the other point of view: questioning whether Real Madrid overpaid. Pérez’s counterpart at Barcelona (Joan Laporta) has derided the expenditure as distorting the transfer market. Beyond that criticism from a bitter rival, few seem to doubt whether the price was fair.

The actual dollar figure is less important than the spending’s significance. With a purchase of this magnitude, Peréz has initiated a second era of Los Galácticos, nearly a decade after he started the first. That era of Madrid football (characterized by Peréz’s annual purchase of a superstar “galáctico”) is remembered as a disappointment, a memory that’s a bit confounding considering the team won the Champions League in its first season and La Liga in its second, though the disappointment is ultimately understandable. Expectations were incredibly high, and not without reason. Given the money spent, the squad would be the best team ever or a bust. When the team failed to build on their league title in the 2002-03 season, the Galácticos movement was deemed a failure.

It’s interesting how one match loss to Barcelona in Madrid can do to redefine the word failure. Nobody panicked after Real Madrid laid an egg at Anfield and got blown out of the Champions League, but after losing 6-2 at home to Barcelona near the close of their La Liga campaign, the word “failure” that had come to define Florentino Pérez’s first tenure as club president sudden came to mean “not so bad.” If failure is a Champions League and a league title, bring back failure.

Hence the election of Pérez and the subsequent hiring of Villareal’s Manuel Pellegrini, acquisition of Kaká, and dawn of the next era of Galácticos soccer. If the papers are to be believed (a ludicrous premise, I know), Peréz is not done spending, which is good. Despite Kaká adding to that core of five core stars Madrid had on hand, Manuel Pellegrini is still shy the artillery he needs to gun down Barcelona. Beyond Gonzalo Higuaín and the still-suspended Pepe, nobody at the Bernabeu’s stables is a sure-fire starter with whom the new coach should feel comfortable. To augment that, we hear names like Cristiano Ronaldo, Franck Ribery and Don Draper.¹

If Pérez’s first two acquisitions foreshadow the remainder of Real Madrid’s summer, Los Blancos will be competing with Barcelona come next fall, though it has little to do with the cash the new president is passing around Europe. Pérez has put Madrid on the fast track to catching their rivals because the Pellegrini and Kaká acquisitions address two of Real Madrid’s three biggest problems. Incompetence from their coach, lack presence in the middle of the pitch, and horrific defending characterized Madrid’s may malaise, defining the three huge holes in Madrid’s squad. Pellegrini and Kaká address two of those three. If Peréz’s next acquisition is as well-targeted, the distance between Real Madrid and Barcelona could then be traversed by the acquisition of one or two key, Seydou Keita-esque role players. The Madridistras are closer to a contending than some might think.

Perhaps that last paragraph is overstating the impact of Kaká. After all, Real Madrid was four goals worse than Barcelona last time the two clubs met. Surely Ricky Kaká can’t make up that difference by himself. No single player is worth that much, right? Else, we would see more drastic improvements with teams when they acquire elite players. If Kaká is really worth four goals, then Real Madrid got a steal at £59 million.

And … enough of that.

Deconstructing my own strawman, Madrid is not four goals worse than Barcelona. Madrid’s holes, however, are the two you would least want in your squad should you be facing a team with Barcelona’s style. You need a presence in the middle of the pitch to counter (or control) Xavi and Andrés Iniesta. You need an adroit back line to answer the relentless questions Barcelona’s passing will ask.

Kaká’s role at Milan may have gotten more advanced as the years went on, but he is still capable of playing that attacking midfield, deep forward position – the one currently looks like a huge pothole for Real Madrid. Particularly in May, when van der Vaart’s play hit a low and Guti’s was sidelined with injury, the gap between Lass and the forward line became a chasm. By the last match day against Osasuna, the only consistent way Madrid had to getting into attack was be going around the chasm and down a wing, through Arjen Robben. Robben is a world class talent, but if you’re relying on him to that extent, you have already failed.

You can not accuse a team of failure in building their squad around a player like Kaká, though the newest Galáctico comes with caveats. Since winning the Ballon d’Or, Kaká has struggled with leg injuries. To his credit, Kaka has not seen a drop in games played or goals scored, though he has not regained his pace of two years ago. He’s scoring as many goals as ever, making it easy to overlook that he is not quite the back-to-back treat he was in 2007. Part of the difference may have been Carlo Ancelotti’s deploying him more advaned in attack, but that explanation creates a chicken-egg problem similar to why Cristiano Ronaldo is becoming more striker than winger.

Regardless of how he was deployed in his last months at Milan, Kaká’s play for the Brazilian national team should absolve doubts as to whether he can play a deeper role. With Luís Fabiano and Robinho generally playing more advanced roles, Kaká often has to take his more natural position – a bit deeper to help linking to the attack, but high enough to be a constant scoring threat. Whether he is as pacy or healthy as he was two years ago can be debated, but his ability to dramatically influence a match from the middle of the pitch can not.

This is exactly the kind of player Madrid is sorely lacking. Putting Kaká in the middle between Robben and a recovered Wesley Sneijder increases Madrid’s ability to link between Lass (or Fernando Gago) and whoever plays striker. With Guti’s injury and Rafael van der Vaart’s ineffectiveness, Los Blancos had nobody to fill that role. That the 32-year-old Guti was missed so much only underscores the problems Real Madrid had before acquiring Kaká.

Those problems may not have been so obvious had it not been for Juande Ramos. The two easiest ways to identity whether your club has a good coach is to assess whether he is playing the right people and whether his tactics play to strengths while obscuring weaknesses. If you followed Real Madrid’s slide, you’re already nodding your head. Ramos did neither of these things, failing to tactically compensate for Guti’s absence while also stubbornly refusing to consistently feature the club’s best goal scorer, Gonzalo Higuaín. If you followed Villareal, you know that these were never problems for Manuel Pellegrini. In swapping Ramos for Pellegrini, Pérez may have done as much to fill a hole as he did when he purchased Kaká.

Unfortunately for Madridistas, neith Pellegrini nor Kaká fill their biggest hole. The back line was unconscionably bad over the season’s last month. After Pepe’s suspension, the back line of Ramos, Fabio Cannavaro, Christoph Metzelder and Gabriel Heinze eclipsed Valencia’s as La Liga’s most inexplicably ineffective defence. For next season, Pepe still has four games to serve on his suspension. Cannavaro’s gone back to the Old Lady and Heinze is better served in a utility role.

Madrid needs a star center back to complement Pepe. He needs to be cerebral, instinctive, and quick. He needs to be what Cannavaro was two years ago. Though that caliber of player rarely becomes available, you can’t help but wonder if Pepe’s national team partner Ricardo Carvalho can be had. Carlos Quieroz may be struggling to get results with Portugal’s national team, but it’s not because of problems at the back. Beyond Carvalho, Madrid showed with the Kaká signing that nobody is beyond their reach. It is just a matter of Pérez reaching for a center back as opposed to a player that will make perfectly capable stars (like Robben or Sneijder) redundant.

At the back left, Arsenal’s Gael Clichy continues to come up, the product of a long love after between the France international and the staff at the Bernabeu. I can not help but wonder what a player like Yuri Zhirkov would do for Real Madrid, though acquiring a player with his penchant for attack would require their signing a dependable center back. You can not have Sergio Ramos on one side and a player like Yuri Zhirkov on the other and not deploy the highest defending quality in the middle of your back line. At least, you ca not while still hoping to unseat Barcelona and compete in Champions League. If Madrid is able to fill holes at center and left back, they could compete with any club in the world, and the only Galáctico they would have to acquire is Kaká.

But I’ve got off track, playing technical director. One of our premises: The papers are to be believed (”a ludicrous premise, I know”). Accordingly, Pérez is much more interested in bringing Ronaldo, Ribery, Diego Forlan and David Villa to the Santiago Bernabeu. As with Kaká, players of that caliber always improve your club. Madrid, however, does not need any of them as much as they need a center and left back. They have Sneijder, Robben, Higuaín, Huntelaar, and while their talismen are not the same players they were five years ago, they still have Raúl and Guti, both of whom can be valuable when used appropriately. This does not even take into account the returning Ruud van Nistelrooy or the out-of-favor Rafael van der Vaart (should he be kept). Yes, Ronaldo or Ribery would make the team better, but is that what’s keeping Real from overtaking Barcelona?

Pérez has already improved Real Madrid for next season. His first two acquisitions, Pellegrini and Kaká, were brilliant in their quality and relevance. Moving forward, the challenge for Real’s reincarnated president is to maintain those two standards. It is not enough to get a Galáctico. Pérez has one, final, gaping hole to fill. Real Madrid has solved their coaching and midfield problems, but if they do not get more quality at the back, they can not compete with the titans of Europe. They can compete with Barcelona.

Richard Farley is a U.S.-based contributor to World Soccer Reader, focusing on the English Premier League and Spain’s La Liga. He also hosts WSR Radio, the site’s regular podcast. He can be reached at richardfarley at gmail dot com and followed on Twitter, username “richardfarley.” Richard also hosts a regular (if informal) podcast at pointoneohradio.com.

1 – Sorry, I’m a bit addicted to Mad Men right now. I’m pretty sure La Marca’s mentioning the show’s lead character was just another example of the Real Madrid mouth piece exaggerating information whispered around the Bernabeu. Apparently, Miguel Pellegrini is a big Jon Hamm fan.

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