There’s a case study in European club football from the 2000s where Real Madrid’s president famously adopted a strategy called the Galactico strategy.
His goal was to assemble the world’s best players at their very peak with the goal of winning everything. This meant getting the likes of Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo, David Beckham, and Ronaldo.
And despite having this expensive assembled squad, the Galactico strategy didn’t work well. Once all the stars landed, Madrid’s league/cup victories became fewer than before.
There were two reasons that became obvious in retrospect.
The first is that with so many stars, there were more egos than any manager could easily handle. Everybody expected to be playing all the time. And that took away the power from the hands of the manager.
The second is that it’s not enough to have stars in every position. It’s important to have fit, complementarity, and alignment. And that meant complementing these players with players that did the unsexy work.
For example, Claude Makélélé – a defensive midfielder for that team – left after he felt underappreciated. And, with him, any chances of success left too.
In any partnership and any team, it’s important to have great people. But it’s more important to have complementary skill sets and alignment.
A Learning a Day 