A New Real Madrid star and a former one pay quick dividends

Fame and fortune come with a price in professional sports.

Gareth Bale scored in his debut with Real Madrid on Saturday. Mesut Ozil, the man Madrid sold to get money to offset Bale's record fee, shone for 80 minutes for his new team, Arsenal.

Neither player was fully match-fit. They would not have started if not for their undoubted talent, their willingness to risk their health and the urgency the clubs felt to get them on the field.

All's well that ends well, you might say. Bale is now a "Galactico," and Madrid is eager to get the rights rolling on a player who cost 100 million euros (or $135 million). And so, with barely any preseason training after he injured an ankle in May, Bale played the first hour of a tough and exhilarating 2-2 draw at Villarreal on Saturday.

Carlo Ancelotti, the new coach of Real, solved the supposed jealousy between Bale and the previous most costly player in history, Cristiano Ronaldo, by playing them on the wings.

Bale started on the right and exchanged roles with Ronaldo on the left, and they both drifted into the center to pop in match-saving opportunist goals from a few yards out.

"They are both great players," Ancelotti said. "It provides absolutely no problem at all." No problem for a coach who has seen it all and done it all as a player and a manager at the highest level. No problem for Ronaldo, whose status at Estadio Santiago Bernabeu was rewarded with a new contract that will dwarf even the one that Bale just signed.

And no problem, or so it seemed, for a Villarreal side that was recently promoted from the second division after acquiring its costliest player, the Mexican Giovani dos Santos, for just 6 million euros.

The shoestring side from the Valencia region tore into Los Galacticos with no fear. Dos Santos, Jonathan Pereira and Javier Aquino, clad in Villarreal's famous yellow uniforms, looked like Lilliputians against the bigger and stronger Madridistas.

"It was a difficult match," Ancelotti conceded. "The different rhythm of the two teams was obvious, but that's to be expected after the international matches."

The calls on Madrid - and on every other big club in Europe - to make players available for World Cup qualifying games around the globe goes some way toward neutralizing the huge monetary advantage that separates the Real Madrids from the Villarreals.

Real had 17 players scattered around the world over the past two weeks, and at least four of them returned unfit for club duty. Ancelotti had a difficult task in persuading Ronaldo and Bale to overlook their differences and strain their joints, but his biggest headache was finding enough fit men to form a makeshift defense.

Villarreal smelled the weakness and went for it at compact, raucous Estadio El Madrigal. The home side's right wing Ruben Gracia, known as Cani, scored first, and it took marvelous acrobatic saves from Real goalkeeper Diego Lopez to prevent that lead from being tripled. Just before halftime, Bale stole behind the home defense (and behind Ronaldo) to stretch out for the equalizer. In the second half, in a similar situation, Ronaldo scored with a shot that deflected off the goalkeeper and across the line.

For Ronaldo, it was goal No. 203 in 203 Liga appearances. For Bale, his new, as yet half-fit, partner in attack, it was goal No. 1 in one match.

Thankfully, for the sake of justice, Villarreal's rousing and relentless attacks were rewarded when dos Santos sped through to convert Cani's neat pass. The pass is often just as important, at least, as the finishing stroke in soccer. Madrid has been awash with disquiet since Sept. 2, when Real sold its passing maestro, Ozil, to help pay for Bale.

Ozil has set up and scored goals for Germany in two World Cup games since then, but shortly after becoming acquainted with his new teammates at Arsenal, he fell ill. It seemed to be just a 24-hour bug. Still, although he traveled with the team to Sunderland, it appeared unlikely that Ozil would play there.

However, when Arsenal's Spanish playmaker, Santi Cazorla, injured an ankle in training, manager Arsene Wenger thought he had to take a risk with Ozil, who was signed for 50 million euros.

"I took a gamble," Wenger said. "But like the team, Ozil had an outstanding first half and dropped his physical level in the second."

That first half, the nearly 90 percent accuracy of Ozil's passes and the vision with which he set up the opening goal for Olivier Giroud, illuminated Arsenal's 3-1 victory on the field over a committed, but overmatched, Sunderland.

Aaron Ramsey, who scored two superb volleyed goals for Arsenal, was entitled to feel that he, on any other day, might be the headline maker for the Gunners. Ramsey has come through the horror of a career-threatening compound leg fracture to be an integral part of the side that is, again, defying the doubters.

Arsenal, they said, was past its best days. Winning the English league, never mind the Champions League, was a long-lost aspiration.

But by paying the price for Ozil, albeit for half the fee that it cost to get Bale, Arsenal has rekindled its challenge. Not least is the effect on the rest of the team, and that is evident in what the players say as much as in the way they play.

Arsenal sold the rights to its stars - Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri, Robin van Persie - in recent seasons. The ambition had fallen away. Buying Ozil, and rushing him onto the team Saturday, was a signal of intent.

© 2013 New York Times News Service