Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and Karim Benzema have yet to break a sweat in a Real Madrid shirt, but we can already give kudos to Florentino Perez for what looks to be another enormous marketing project. It took the construction tycoon four summers to rack up a tab of $219 million for the originals. It took less than four weeks this summer to eclipse that mark by over $80 million.

The first incarnation produced two Liga titles and a Champions League trophy. Three titles in three years were just enough to validate the sporting aspect of a project aimed at making Madrid the world’s richest club, if not necessarily its most winning. In this, Florentino succeeded. By his fifth year at the Bernabeu, Madrid had pulled ahead of Manchester United as the world’s financial hegemon. That the strategy led to a three-year title drought was secondary for Florentino, but not for Madrid fans.

The Madridistas had seen Vicente Del Bosque – the man whose titles legitimized Florentino’s project – exit through the back door. A conveyor belt of coaches followed. Carlos Quieroz, Jose Camacho, Mariano Garcia, Vanderlei Luxemburgo and Juan Lopez Caro all failed to replicate Del Bosque’s success, as Madrid’s marketing and sporting projects clashed.

The summer of 2003 epitomized the discrepancy. David Beckham and Ronaldinho were the two biggest pieces in the transfer market and Madrid had its pick. The bigger star went to the Bernabeu, but not the better player. Soon after, internal conflicts and a defensive deficiency brought about the end of the Florentino era and with it, the end of the Galacticos.

The new version is different in some ways, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve seen this movie before. ‘The New Galacticos’ feels more like a re-make than a sequel. Instead of learning from the mistakes of the past, Florentino seems to be speeding up the process and paying the expedite fee. It took three years to bring Figo, Zidane and Ronaldo together. It took one month to assemble C. Ronaldo, Benzema and Kaka.

Lost in the glitz and glamour of those three blockbuster signings lies a very simple question: Did Madrid actually need an offensive overhaul? Without a single ‘Galactico’ to speak of, Real scored 83 goals this season and 84 the previous campaign. Both are better offensive outputs than all but one year of the original Galacticos (86 goals in ’02-’03).

Of course, only time will tell if the millions invested in Madrid’s new trio will result in significantly more offense. And whether more offense will result in more titles. And whether Pellegrini will have more success managing the egos than Quieroz, Luxemburgo and Co. In fact, the only thing you can count on is that Florentino will build a real marketing power-house.

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