Galacticos Debate: Is Benzema Really That Much Better Than Higuain?

Say whatever you'll say about £80 million (€94m) for Cristiano Ronaldo and €67m for Kaka, if they pay for themselves as promised by Real Madrid president Florentino Perez - a man who has already done this before - then who is to complain? The gut reaction may be one of disgust, but profit will always be profit, recession or not.

But the likes of Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo are such a rarity, that not even David Villa makes that Galactico bracket, which is why when it came to closing the deal for 'El Guaje', suddenly, Perez had much more reasonable limits.

Madrid's second striking option was Karim Benzema, the Lyon star who has long had eyes for Spain but reaffirmed his loyalty to Lyon, always maintaining he was willing to stay at the club.

Still just 21 years of age, the France international has had two outstanding seasons in Ligue 1 and is costing the Spanish giants around €35m and will sign a six-year contract either this week or next.

This, a player often compared to Ronaldo (that's R9), a player who, after scoring against Manchester United in the Champions League, was personally greeted by Sir Alex Ferguson and given a United shirt.

He may be a special talent, comparable with Fernando Torres prior to his explosion at Liverpool, but now is the time you can begin placing question marks around Madrid's transfer policy, asking just how much is too much.

Cristiano Ronaldo was the undisputed missing piece: added pace, added width - on both sides, no less - added aerial prowess and a bagful of goals.

Kaka, seen as the first honourable successor to Zidane since 2006, adds the extra touch of class to an overpopulated position in the Spanish capital, with the likes of Wesley Sneijder and Rafael van der Vaart not quite having everything it took to make the highest grade there is in club football.

But then, with these two outstanding forward players on board, the chances of Madrid regularly starting with two strikers next season is unlikely. Now into the mix come Raul, Gonzalo Higuain, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar.

One or two of the four may depart, and thus for one place up front, an incoming replacement could produce just the right balance, but if the new signing consigns Gonzalo Higuain's magical talent to the bench, would it not have been more beneficial for it to be both a player guaranteed to succeed from the first whistle, perhaps a Spaniard, and crucially - for the sake of Higuain's development, if nothing else - someone older.

It is at least worth the forgotten grains of integrity that Madrid refused to pay over the odds for a player they couldn't 'guarantee' would recoup the entirety of his transfer fee, but on the pitch, the whole world knows David Villa would have been sensational for Madrid. He wanted Madrid, but Madrid didn't want him quite enough - despite surely knowing their failure to land him makes him a near-certainty to be landing in Catalunya for the start of the new season.

Gonzalo Higuain is a whole nine days older than Benzema. Maybe it is survival of the fittest, maybe if Benzema is that little bit younger, that little bit more experienced and that little bit better, that's Higuain's problem. But then again, maybe there comes a point when cut-throat, scientific decision-making can no longer be applied to a player of such incredible value to Real Madrid.

Sneijder, for all his versatility and work rate, hasn't shown that X-factor, while Van der Vaart, for all his back-heeling, hat-trick scoring X-factor, perhaps doesn't have quite the right attitude to succeed as part of such a demanding institution.

Higuain, barely out of his teens, has saved the club at least half a dozen times over the past two seasons, combining all the quality and work rate you could ask for from a player who was signed for just €13m - just over a third of what it will cost to land Benzema.

Villa would have gratified the fans in ways no other striker on the planet could have done. Spain's new striking icon, the successor to Raul's No. 7 with La Roja and a player who, now 27 years old, could have offered the Bernabeu a handful of outstanding seasons before making way in the starting XI for Pipita.

Benzema, on the other hand, looks to consign the Argentine to further bit-part roles, considering that the only way to fit both strikers, Kaka, Ronaldo and Franck Ribery in one team would be to have Lass manning the middle of the park by himself. As Michael Carrick and Sir Alex Ferguson found out in the Champions League final, that may work against Bolton or Blackburn, but not Barcelona.

Without doubt, the odds are in favour of Benzema blowing away the Bernabeu, but in turn blowing away Gonzalo Higuain's chance to make a name for himself alongside the Galacticos would be the first and only failing of Florentino Perez's return so far, and one he could, if luck doesn't stay on his side, live to regret further on into his reign.

Sulmaan Ahmad, Goal.com

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