Raul Gonzalez Blanco

Raul Gonzalez Blanco made his debut before the demanding Bernabeu crowd on a cold November night, back in 1994. Sixty minutes of sheer talent and an innate sense of the game from that skinny 17-year-old were enough for us socios to see him win a penalty, assist Ivan Zamorano and send a cracking shot into the top left-hand corner. If that was not enough, his seemingly endless bag of tricks looked stunning. As though trying to hide his rojiblanco past, Raul had just single-handedly demolished Atletico de Madrid in his first match in La Castellana.

Raul was given an emotional send-off at the Bernabeu in July

GettyImages

Raul was given an emotional send-off at the Bernabeu in July

Once the game was over, the general opinion among my neighbours in the hardly trendy Upper Deck was almost unanimous: the kid's a wonder, but needs to be handled with care to avoid jeopardising his future. I was shocked. Shouldn't this kid start every single match? "No way," replied Mateo, from his 20+ years of Bernabeu experience. "His body won't be able to take the punishment, or it'll end up shortening his career."

The rest, as you know, is football history. Raul went on to play 742 official matches for Real Madrid, scoring 325 goals, winning six La Liga titles, three Champions League finals - scoring in two of them - and two Intercontinental Cups, again scoring the winner in one of them.

He also earned 102 caps and scored 44 goals for the Spanish national team, although he painfully failed to lead his country to success in international tournaments. In fact, Spain's unprecedented winning streak since he was exiled makes one believe that 'The Ewing Theory', as defined by Bill Simmons and Dave Cirili, should indeed be renamed 'The Raul Theory'. Incidentally, this theory also explains the curious phenomena experienced by Valencia this season, after their two most renowned players left, captured by Phil Ball in his most recent article.

Going back to Raul, and despite his overwhelming statistics, I still believe that Mateo was right. During the latter half of his career, Raul's body started to show the effects of the excessive number of top-level matches played at such a tender age. The formerly ubiquitous forward lost the extra step that had previously ensured so many decisive goals for both club and country. From his mid-20s onwards, Raul started to live off his extraordinary sense of the game and his long top-flight experience.

The sharp decrease of his scoring in do-or-die matches was probably the most telling sign of his physical decline. The player who once relished finishing off Barcelona, Manchester United or Juventus saw his club exit the Champions League in the early knock-out stages for six consecutive years, while other Real Madrid players scored the key goals that took the club to two consecutive La Liga titles.

For the best part of his career, Raul embodied the dream of the Real Madrid fan of old: a home-grown player (at least since he was 13), who understood what the club meant to their supporters, killed himself on the pitch, led by example and always showed up for big matches. Those same socios who religiously followed the youth teams and wanted to avoid the early burn-out of a potential star had found their saviour - their new number '7'.

Raul's 15 seasons with Real Madrid span the radical transformation of the club from local, traditional and poorly managed sports entity to global marketing giant. When el siete joined the first team, you could buy a €10 ticket, jump over a couple of defective fences and sit in a €60 one. After years pulling the aforementioned trick match after match, this columnist became a socio at the beginning of 1994 just by purchasing season tickets, available at an amazingly low price. You could hardly find the official shirt anywhere in the city, let alone the country or the rest of the world. The stadium did not have a shop. The incredible collection of trophies carelessly sat in a completely inadequate space, much smaller than my tiny one-bedroom apartment. My neighbours in the stadium constantly joked about the most likely date for a real refurbishment of the Bernabeu; 2050 was the consensus.

While scoring goals and winning trophies, Raul witnessed the advent of a new era, in both the sporting and the business sectors, and couldn't prevent their subsequent mixture, or rather confusion. Zidanes and Pavones, Galacticos and other similar football philosophies had an umbilical relationship with the new, nonnegotiable marketing orientation of the club, an otherwise logical consequence of the new financial context worldwide.

You can't argue too much with the positives of this transformation: the stadium, after not one but several refurbishments, now looks stunning; the club learned how to profit from previously unexplored revenue sources; matches are systematically sold out, while you can't get season tickets unless you wait until ... yes, 2050; and Real Madrid own the most valuable European football brand, according to Brand Finance.

But obviously there's a price to pay, and regardless of other minor issues, that bill has come in the shape of a blatant loss of the values that characterised that Real Madrid club which Raul joined in 1994. Not to steal from Nick Hornby, but the fact is that the Mateos of old, who followed the youth teams and cared about the correct development of the younger players, have been replaced with less knowledgeable, edgy suits who demand that new signings make an immediate impact and can't entertain the idea of a player maturing over a period of time that might last more than two matches, let alone full seasons.

Now homegrown players are rarely promoted to the senior side, which apparently justifies the constant signing and firing of foreign players who don't have the chance to prove themselves over a reasonable period of time either.

Cristiano Ronaldo represents a new era and a new attitude at Real Madrid

GettyImages

Cristiano Ronaldo represents a new era and a new attitude at Real Madrid

As all these changes happened, Raul looked more and more like the icon of a previous era. After his move to Germany at the end of the summer, Real Madrid's No. 7 shirt had a brand new owner. CR7, an unquestionable sign of the times, has an impressive work ethic, is a global brand in himself, but spends matches frowning at team-mates who take too long to give him the ball, waving arms in disgust when his fellow forwards don't see him open or kicking the grass in frustration because the ball doesn't arrive exactly where he wants it. His impatience is a faultless reflection of the new madridistas, who demand a perfect show every single night.

Earlier this season I was watching Barcelona at my friend's place. After an impressive build-up, Messi scored with ease, which prompted my friend's six-year-old kid, already brainwashed into the new meringue way of doing things, to say: "How come we haven't bought him yet?"

And remembering about Mateo and his mates that cold night at the Bernabeu back in 1994, and comparing their views to that of my friend's son, or picturing that old, cosy, precarious stadium and looking at the current state-of-the-art version, or even taking a look at the picture of Raul tasting Champions League glory in 1998 next to a shot of CR7 after scoring at the Anoeta, I'll use a sentence from a former boss to conclude that Real Madrid are indeed moving, but they would do well to make sure it's forward.