Between 2000 and 2003, Real Madrid signed Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo and Beckham. One global icon every summer. It was the most marketable squad ever assembled, and for three years it won nothing that mattered.
The problem was never the talent. It was the shape around it. Madrid started picking players for shirt sales and reach as much as for what the team needed on the pitch. The marketing plan quietly took over from the football plan, and nobody in the building stopped it.
Then they sold the balance. In 2003 they let Claude Makélélé leave for Chelsea, the unglamorous midfielder who did the dirty work that made the stars look good. Zidane put it best: why add another coat of gold paint to the Bentley when you are taking out the engine?
For a while the accounts looked great while the team got worse. Commercial income kept climbing as results slid. That gap is the whole lesson. When the most visible part of an organisation starts making the calls the operating core should own, spending on the brand cannot paper over a broken structure. Stars sell shirts. Systems win seasons.