Real Madrid is a winning machine, pure and simple. If your metric for judging a football club is trophies won and the quality of the individual players, you won't find a "better" club than Real Madrid. No club has more fans around the world, and they are, as a rule, rabidly vocal. They love the shower of trophies. They love the constant stream of flashy
Galactico players. And they want more.
Real Madrid (and Barcelona)
have a different model from most football clubs though, with the club theoretically being a non-profit owned by paying club members (over 90,000 in Real Madrid's case). They elect a representative body that in turn elects a club president every four years. This sounds lovely and democratic, but in fact it has created a club political environment where presidents use their term in office to please the masses and win re-election.
So the club's leadership is, by definition, short-sighted - the president is never thinking past the next election cycle. The club members and fans don't mind this short-sightedness because it's brought them success, and probably will continue to do so. And if they don't like the current president they can vote him out and vote in a new one who brings new bank loan guarantees, a new sponsor deal, and promises to sign XYZ world star. And the cycle repeats.
If all this sounds boring to you and you don't care, I get it - most fans don't really care how football is run as long as the spectacle lives up to the hype. Enjoy the show. Real certainly deliver in that department.
Lots of sport writes far more eloquent than I have been over this many times, so I don't want to try and duplicate their efforts (because I certainily can't better them). But Real's shortsighted approach is not a secret.
