Jorge Valdano describes what it was like being the sporting director during the Galactico revolution

Former Real Madrid striker Jorge Valdano spoke at a La Liga event today and said some interesting things regarding his time serving as the club’s sporting director. Valdano, who was in that role in 1999 before Florentino Perez arrived, had the unique position of being at the helm before and after the ‘Galacticos’.

“Being a sporting director at that moment of transition, in the before and after, I represented the ‘before’,” Valdano said with a laugh. “I was the one who took care of football all his life in the face of this commercial and advertising avalanche that were the Galacticos,”

Valdano says that what Florentino Perez implemented at that time was in many ways ahead of its time.

“Florentino discovered that this was a business for heroes,” the Argentine said. “Heroes were priceless because they were part of a strategy... Now all the clubs aspire to impact the market similarly to the way that Real Madrid did at that time”

Certainly the landscape has changed dramatically since the original ‘Galactico’ project. Real Madrid have much more competition now, and the sporting direction has shifted quite a bit since then.