Transfer ban could be the best thing that ever happens to Real Madrid

After imposing transfer bans on Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, FIFA has not finished with Spanish football yet.

Villarreal and Valencia have both also been investigated over the signing of young players and there are suggestions that cases involving Granada and Rayo Vallecano are being looked at too. By the time the disgraced moral guardians of the game have reached the end of their Spanish inquisition La Liga will have bars on its transfer window.

There has to be some sympathy with Spanish clubs. Of all the terrible things done to minors in the global labour market, giving a 14-year-old boy what amounts to a sport scholarship in Madrid or Barcelona has to be some way down the list. As one father threatening to take FIFA to court said: “If my son was a classical musician and I had the chance to educate him in Vienna then I would. What’s the difference?”

Of course it’s also true that in the last Under-20s World Cup four of the Argentina side were already playing outside of their home country – that can’t be right for a football crazy nation that has won the World Cup twice.

Rights and wrongs aside, a transfer ban might just turn out to be one of the best things that ever happened to Real Madrid. Stopping them signing players will be one of football’s great experiments – like taking fizzy drinks away from a hyperactive child.

The effects could be calming, positive and productive beyond supporters’ wildest dreams.

This is a club that self-destructs every summer just because it can. When Real Madrid won the Champions League in 2014 it should have been the beginning of a dominant period. No right-minded club dismantles a team that has won the biggest club competition in football.

But president Florentino Perez stripped down the midfield engine, selling Angel Di Maria and Xabi Alonso. James Rodriguez was world football’s shiny new superstar after his wonder goal at Brazil 2014 so they bought him, ignoring the fact that with Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema there was no room to play him where he should be played. And Dani Carvajal was rewarded for his part in the triumph when the club spent €30 million on his replacement – the Brazilian Danilo.

Madrid won nothing the following season and to complete the self-destruction the manager who won the European Cup, Carlo Ancelotti, was sacked too.

If Perez hankers for a a Galatico presentation now it will have to be a glitzy contract renewal. The front page of Marca on Thursday suggests one is already in the pipeline with Bale’s contact until 2019 set to be extended to 2021.

But there will be no more new players. No more Danilos, Fabio Coentraos, Asier Illaramendis – that’s €90m saved right there.

The current squad will have no alternative but to stick together. The in-fighting can go on hold for 12 months because no one is being edged out. Everyone stays.

Former Chile coach Jorge Sampaoli said this week that while “Suarez, Messi and Neymar play for each other” it often seems Real Madrid’s front three are playing against each other. From here on in a new cohesion will take hold.

There will be some holes in the squad if Real Madrid do not sign anyone in this window. But even without a holding midfielder of international class, a reserve left-back and a fourth centre-back the squad can learn to stretch and reshape to cover the gaps.

And a team spirit approaching the one that won the league for Atletico Madrid two seasons ago and the treble for Barcelona last year might even emerge.

And then, when the ban ends in the summer of 2017 the club can go back to their old ways. If they haven't learned a valuable lesson in the meantime that is.