Madrid go Dutch

After much spec­u­la­tion from the pun­dits (myself included) that Real Madrid would sign Arjen Robben, the club took a side­step in their pur­suit of some Dutch flair. On Mon­day, the club unveiled Dutch duo Wes­ley Snei­jder and Roys­ton Dren­the as their lat­est sign­ings. Dren­the was acquired from Feyeno­ord for a reported fee of 14 mil­lion euros, while the 23-year-old mid­field mae­stro Snei­jder arrives from Ajax after Real agreed to pay 27 mil­lion euros. With the addi­tion of the two Dutch­men, Real have signed six new play­ers at a cost of in excess of 70 mil­lion euros since the club won the league title last sea­son. Real are still inter­ested in adding Arjen Robben if a suit­able deal can be worked out with Chelsea.

There was some hard feel­ings between Ajax and Real dur­ing the nego­ti­a­tions for Snei­jder, as Real tried to impose a a three-hour win­dow in which Ajax were expected to accept their 24 mil­lion euro bid. Ajax, of course, were not going to be bul­lied and ended talks until Real apol­o­gized for their behav­iour. Real apol­o­gized and returned to the nego­ti­at­ing table after Saturday’s 1–0 defeat to Sevilla in the first leg of the Span­ish Super Cup. They also upped their offer to 27 mil­lion euros which Ajax accepted.

Snei­jder is a player that I rate very highly and I believe he com­pares favor­ably to cre­ative mid­field­ers such as Paul Scholes and Deco. Like those two, Snei­jder is smaller in phys­i­cal stature but is strong on the ball and his pass­ing range and vision are excel­lent. I also like the fact that he is very much a two-footed player, which is sur­pris­ingly not as com­mon as one would expect at the high­est lev­els. In his time at Ajax, Snei­jder scored 43 goals in 126 appear­ances as well as 6 goals in 35 appear­ances for the Nether­lands. I’ve linked to a video that shows some of his finer moments and I look for­ward to him mak­ing an impact in La Liga this season.