Carlo Ancelotti may be about to inherit a problem.
The former Chelsea manager is, as I write this, prohibitive odds-on favourite to succeed the new Chelsea manager José Mourinho in the hot seat at Real Madrid.
If he does, the Italian will be looked to by the Spanish club’s fans to deliver a 10th European Cup to the Bernabéu’s church-like trophy-room – and the first for more than a decade.
Since 15 May 2002 when the sweetest volley I ever saw, struck by Zinedine Zidane, lit up an autumnal Glasgow night and helped to see off Michael Ballack’s Bayer Leverkusen, Madrileños have had to endure the spectacle of arch domestic rivals Barcelona lifting a trophy that their grandparents came to regard as Real’s private property, not once but three times.
Last season, even Barça were humbled, as the much trumpeted German revival, spearheaded by Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, swept aside all in its path.
Ancelotti’s problem, should he make the switch from the French to the Spanish capital city, is that – as mapped out clearly in Deloitte’s latest Annual Review of Football Finance – the financial forces are running against him.
For one thing, the leagues supplying several of the clubs likely to emerge as Real’s biggest rivals are about to benefit from eye-popping new TV deals.
Clubs in England’s Premier League, including Mourinho’s Chelsea, are, says Deloitte, “likely to see a £600 million increase in revenues to over £3 billion in 2013-14”.
It is a similar story with Germany’s Bundesliga, new home of one-time Barcelona maestro Pep Guardiola.
According to Deloitte: “From 2013-14 the Bundesliga clubs will enjoy a significant increase in revenue, in particular from their domestic broadcast deals that are up c.50 percent.”
It gets worse: under the present Spanish model, Real and Barça can sell their own broadcast rights – a state of affairs that has helped to make them consistently the world’s two highest-earning football clubs in recent years.
Unfortunately, other Spanish clubs just cannot keep up.
In the four years to 2011-12, according to Deloitte, while the “Clásico clubs grew revenues at an average rate of 10 percent per annum, the rest of the clubs barely grew at all”.
Now, with Real in 2011-12 generating, according to Deloitte, “around 28 times more revenue” than the lowest-earning La Liga club, the financial disparities have become so vast that pressure is mounting in some circles for the pendulum to be swung back a bit the other way.
As Deloitte puts it: “Discussions continue in relation to a more balanced revenue distribution model from 2015-16.”
The difficulty is that any measures taken to redress the competitive balance domestically are likely to make it even harder for Real – and Barcelona – to get their hands back on that coveted, but suddenly elusive, Champions League trophy.
There is one short-term chink of light: the wage:revenue ratio of the two Spanish giants – at a combined 47 percent in 2011-12 – is relatively low.
Any new Ancelotti regime at the Bernabéu would have some capacity to run up the wage bill in order to compete for players against cash-rich rivals from the Premier League and Bundesliga without risking the farm.
In the longer term, though, the financial signposts visible most clearly in Spain seem to me to be pointing ever more insistently in the direction of a bona fide European Superleague.
Elite football rarely, if ever, follows a logical path; too many emotions are invested in the game that ate the world for it to be otherwise.
However, if, come 2015-16, Real and Barça together form the view that they are being asked to sacrifice their European ambitions on the altar of domestic competitive balance, you do not need the imagination of Salman Rushdie to join the dots and see how one thing might lead to another.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938