40 years have passed since Madrid stopped signing in summer. It happened in the 1980-81 campaign. Madrid had just won the League and the Cup against Castilla. A final that united the white first squad with the subsidiary team held at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, and that incidentally, allowed Three key pieces of the Madrid youth squad were promoted to the first team: goalkeeper Agustín, midfielder Ricardo Gallego and Paco Pineda, a sharp attacker from Malaga. They were the requests that the then coach Vujadin Boskov requested from the then president Luis de Carlos. The first two made their careers in the 80s in the white team Pineda was not so lucky: he left the white discipline in 1985 towards Zaragoza.
By then, the economic crisis affected Madrid. The signing of Laurie Cunningham the previous year (1979), which cost a million pounds of the time (about 123 million pesetas to change) plus the remodeling of the Bernabéu to modernize the stadium with a view to the World Cup in Spain slowed down the power to make a great expense. But given the success of the white squad (League champion and Cup champion), he allowed himself to make that adjustment. With the departure of Pirri (he left for Mexico) plus the rise of this trio of homegrown players, the whites would reach the final of the European Cup that Liverpool would win in Paris. The dream of the Seventh was fading 15 years after raising the Sixth in Brussels against Partizan (2-1). In addition, they would lose the League on the last day against Real Sociedad. In the Cup, he would be eliminated by Sporting, which would ultimately be a finalist.
There is another campaign that can be considered that Madrid did not make any financial expenditure on signings, but yes he did it 'in kind': in the 1984-85 campaign, the madridistas signed Jorge Valdano, an Argentine attacker who had triumphed at Alavés and Zaragoza. He arrived in Concha Espina after finishing his contract with the Zaragoza team. In order not to get into battles, the white board agreed to give the white team to the striker Cholo. for a season. Since then, Madrid has always signed on the summer market. Until this past 2020-21 market, which only recovered three homegrown players: Odegaard (recovered from Real Sociedad), Lunin (Oviedo) and Odriozola (Bayern Munich, with whom he won the Bundesliga, the Cup and the Champions League). Forty years later, Madrid decided not to sign anyone …