Is Florentino Perez repeating his mistakes?

In the last week, Real Madrid sold two of their most important players, Angel Di Maria and Xabi Alonso. Both players played a big part in the successful 2013/14 season, but neither were exactly "big name" players. So Florentino Perez chose to do some work in the transfer market this summer and opened his cheque book after the World Cup to bring in three of its best performers, Toni Kroos, James Rodriguez and Keylor Navas.

James and Kroos will serve as direct replacements for Di Maria and Alonso, but Carlo Ancelotti is going to have to change his tactical approach. And, given that Di Maria and Alonso played so well, it seems an unnecessary change, mostly because neither Kroos or James can provide the defensive balance to the capital-based club that their predecessors could. 

So, to avoid the problems that will arise from these midfield changes, Madrid are in the process of adapting to a possession based tactical ideology, which seems like a good idea upon first inspection.

However, then one thinks about just how Real Madrid managed to achieve such success last season... The first football match one thinks of when reflecting on the last season for Los Blancos is the Bayern Munich thrashing. Pep Guardiola's team were completely dominated by the counter attacking approach used by Carlo Ancelotti.

Is it necessary to throw that winning formula out of the window just to have one or two more star names on the team sheet?

This question was actually answered a decade ago, during Perez's first stint as club president. Amongst many other similar transfer deals, he sold Claude Makelele to Chelsea and bought David Beckham from Manchester United after firing the incredibly successful Vicente Del Bosque. The result was incredible commercial success for the club, but it came at a price of failure on the pitch. Madrid never managed to win silverware again until Perez resigned and Fabio Capello sold off his star recruits.

So, nothing can be said yet, because the team that Madrid has at it's hands is yet to play together for enough time to make judgements, but the signs of a repeat of the original Galitico disaster are there for all to see.