Official: James Rodriguez to Real Madrid

Yeah... i'm going to rely on helpcatalonia.com to give an unbiased and factual story on Madrid.

And the investigation is on property sold to Real Madrid in the late 90s that, 15 years later, is worth 5x. Well the issues they're going to find are this: 1) once the property was sold to Real Madrid, the value of all surrounding property went up 2x just because people knew that improvements were going to be made to the neighborhood. Similar to what happens in the US when a sports team buys land in urban areas. 2) Real estate in the major European capitals have boomed since the late 90s. I'm in real estate. Just as an example, Paris property has gone up at minimum 3x and sometimes 10x over this period.

It's a witch hunt.

In the US at least.... cities often sell land at highly discounted prices to entities they feel will revive the area. It's often done with "development agreements", where the city requires the entity to develop and invest in exchange for the favorable sale. It's extremely common.

Manchester United and Bayern Munich are also highly successful football clubs.

Yet we don't seem to hear of any allegations of grand scale corruption.. a few murmurs of match fixing of course, but that's a completely different ball game and there is far less evidence to support it.

Why the "witch hunt" on Real?

sports... the property is worth 50X the purchase. Not 5X - sorry but whether or not you work in RE, neither you or I have the full details. Where there's smoke there's fire.

helpcatalonia.com

OK look this is getting out of hand and I am derailing the thread. Naive of me to think that it wouldn't invoke this kind of reaction.

I've said my piece on this.

50x is possible too... it just depends on how underdeveloped/undesirable the property was. There are some places that you couldn't give away in downtown Los Angeles in the early 90s... but with the reinvigoration that came as a result of LA Live and the Staples Center, it's gone through the roof. Cleaned up crime, added commerce and shopping, attracted investors... as a result, you have multi-million dollar condos being sold when you only had run down apartments before.

So unless there's a report of what the real estate was prior to it being sold to Real Madrid and its evolution since... you don't know a thing.

And really, this real estate has little to no impact on Real Madrid's financial standing today. Its 500 million of revenue a year are not being generated from that real estate deal... So i don't even really see the relevance.

James having a very good season all things considered. He is playing very well, moving the ball with a lot of intelligence and accuracy. He certainly belong at the level we play at. It's still early but he is having a very good start

In the last 3rd he is way better than Di Maria. Defensively he isn't a liability but could do better. He's much better on the right than on the left and has a genius touch on him. He's playing with much more confidence than in September and august and he'll get only better.

http://www.gfycat.com/AdorableConstantAcornwoodpecker

Living up to DAT transfer fee

Absolute gem of a player. So glad we got him.

I remember about the debate about Sneijder vs James WC performance.

James on course to surpass Sneider's Madrid career stats in 1/3 of the amount of games (23 vs 66 games)

Both 23yo when they played for Madrid.
James in 23 games: 9 goals and 8 assist
Sneider in 66 games: 11 goals and 11 assist

Sneijder is a fraud but the latter was playing in a much weaker team.

Gil wrote:Sneijder is a fraud but the latter was playing in a much weaker team.

there was nothing fraudulent  about that 2009-2010 season.

too bad he never reached that level again .

i don't think james surpassing sneijder's madrid numbers is a big deal, not necessarily worth a comparison.....in fairness to wesley, he started off well, hit a couple of free kicks and had a good first season, injuries mauled him and most of our dutch players in the second year, he got sold in the third, and his time at madrid has been largely forgotten.....and with respect to numbers, its tough to compare, the team in 08 is largely different from the one now, not just in terms of personnel but style of play....but yeah james surpassing wesley's madrid numbers is not anything particularly exciting or noteworthy, its not like sneijder was some legend or real madrid icon whose shit didn't stink

Nailed on! Lol

Sneijder's main problem was Madrid's night life lol

Anyway I guess we can comfortably put Di Maria with Ozil in the "Players the GOAT made look great" list.

James has slotted in with absolutely no issues and has done great.

I know Angel is your boy Hala lol, I'm not saying he isn't a fantastic player (he is) just saying that Madrid are playing great without him which is a far cry from what people thought would happen. His influence on the team was basically the same as Ozil's.

James has been a joy to watch and is one of our best preformers right now plain and simple. I think losing Xabi was the biggest gamble but between James, Kroos, Modric and Isco I'd venture to say that Madrid's midfield has never been as elite as it currently is.

So good.

Better than Silva.

Some footballer bah gawd

People were mad at me when I said if Suarez had to go then doing a straight swap for James would not be bad for us.

Also, Sneijder is not a fraud. Fantastic player actually, but he is not comparable to James in playstyle anyway so yeah their production numbers shouldn't be compared.

He can't score an ugly goal for God's sake.

Was a beast today