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€60 million for Luís Figo, €73.5 million for Zinédine Zidane, €45 million for Ronaldo, €37.5 million for David Beckham. Between 2000 and 2003, Real Madrid signed one of the world’s most famous soccer players every summer. After the Spanish Super Cup in August 2003, the club did not win another trophy until 2006. This is a counterexample. It illustrates the second half of the Team Principle of the Catalyst: teams need people who get things moving – but stars alone don’t make a team.
The Plan: A Global Star Every Year
Situation
In 2000, Florentino Pérez was elected president of Real Madrid. He beat the incumbent, Lorenzo Sanz, by promising an aggressive transfer policy. His plan: a global star every year. Luís Figo arrived from FC Barcelona in 2000, Zinédine Zidane from Juventus in 2001, Ronaldo from Inter Milan in 2002 and David Beckham from Manchester United in 2003. Michael Owen (2004) and Robinho (2005) followed later. The guiding idea was called “Zidanes y Pavones”: global stars plus players from the club’s own youth academy.
Connection to the team principle
The plan answered one question: Who are the best? It left a second one open: Who makes sure the best work together? The model had no dedicated place for that task. Between the stars and the young academy players, there was no one whose role was to hold the game together.
As Long as It Works
Situation
At first, the plan paid off on the field, too. Under coach Vicente del Bosque, Real won the league in 2000–01 and 2002–03 and the Champions League in 2001–02. Zidane scored the winner in the final.
Connection to the team principle
The early years show that stars are not the problem. The principle does not say that stars do harm. It says that they are not enough on their own. In this phase, alongside the stars, there was a coach under whom things worked and players who worked behind the scenes.
Summer 2003: Two Departures
Situation
After the title-winning 2002–03 season, del Bosque was fired, even though he had won the Champions League twice with the club. That same summer, after Beckham’s signing, defensive midfielder Claude Makélélé left. The club had refused him a raise. Teammates such as Fernando Hierro, Fernando Morientes and Steve McManaman had backed his demand.
Connection to the team principle
Makélélé was not a player who made headlines. He did his work in front of his own defense, not in front of the opposing goal. That experienced teammates stood up for him says something about how highly the team itself valued him. If you want to know who holds a team together, the best people to ask are those who work alongside that person. In a single summer, the club let go of the man who carried the load in the background and the coach under whom things had worked – and brought in another star.
Three Years Without a Trophy
Situation
From 2003 to 2006, Real went three seasons without a trophy. In the Champions League, the run ended in the quarterfinals in 2004 and in the round of 16 in 2005 and 2006. In the four years after del Bosque, the club had four coaches. On February 27, 2006, Pérez resigned. Commercially, by contrast, the plan worked: in 2005–06 Real was the highest-earning club in the world, thanks in part to Beckham’s pull in Asia.
Connection to the team principle
Revenue rose; the trophies stayed away. Stars attract attention – but that does not turn them into a team. Researchers discuss this as the “too-much-talent effect.” In 2014, Roderick I. Swaab, Michael Schaerer, Eric M. Anicich, Richard Ronay and Adam D. Galinsky reported that in sports where players depend heavily on one another, such as soccer and basketball, team performance rises with the share of top talent only up to a point and then falls. The finding is disputed. In 2021, Bartosz Gula, Nemanja Vaci, Rainer W. Alexandrowicz and Merim Bilalić reanalyzed the basketball data and found no decline: more talent always brought more success, only with diminishing returns. According to their critique, the statistical method used in the first study produces an inverted U-curve where there is none. Put cautiously: the next star adds less than the last one. Whether one more star eventually starts to hurt remains an open question.
What Can’t Be Proven
Situation
Why the trophies dried up is a matter of interpretation. The explanation that points to Makélélé’s departure is popular, but it cannot be proven. The stars’ age, the many changes of coach and injuries all played a part.
Connection to the team principle
For your team, the cautious reading is enough. In those years, Real Madrid knew very precisely what a star was worth – and apparently far less precisely what the people who keep a team running were worth. You can check for this imbalance without being a soccer fan.
Key takeaways
Key Lessons
- Next to each name on your team, write down what this person makes possible for the others. Where there is nothing, take a closer look – before you let someone go.
- With every new addition, ask: Who will hold the whole thing together afterward? If you have no answer to that, a star is not what you are missing.
- Listen when colleagues stand up for someone. The team often knows better than management who is carrying the load.
- Separate image from results. Revenue, reach and glamour are not the same as the team’s performance.
- Don’t casually replace what works – neither the people who carry the team nor the person who leads them.
Summary
Year after year, Real Madrid bought stars, and at first it won trophies with them. In 2003, the coach and a low-profile midfielder left, another star arrived, and three seasons passed without a trophy. What exactly caused this cannot be proven. But the picture is clear: stars alone don’t make a team. It takes people who get things moving and keep them moving.