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Real Madrid ushered in the Bernd Schuster era by signing two centre-backs, a neat irony given that the German has promised a return of entertaining, attack-minded football to the Bernabeu following the end of Fabio Capellos brief reign at the club.******What is it about Real and centre-backs? Since they discarded skipper Fernando Hierro after they won the league title back in 2003, the nine-times European champions have spent over 110 million euros on trying to fill his shoes, but instead have developed a reputation for becoming a graveyard for some of the worlds best defenders.******Real looked to have made an astute decision in opting to replace Hierro with highly-rated Argentine youngster Gabriel Milito in 2003, but backed out at the last minute citing a suspect knee. Milito joined Zaragoza on the rebound and hardly missed a game before completing a move to Barcelona this week.******Fellow Argentine Walter Samuel arrived at Real with glittering references from AS Roma and a hefty 25-million euro price tag. He left a season later, morale shattered and with the jeers of the Bernabeu faithful ringing in his ears.******Jonathan Woodgate cost almost as much, sat on the treatment table perfecting his Spanish for over a year, finally showed signs of recapturing the sort of form that made him one of the most valued defenders in the Premier League and was then offloaded to his home town club of Middlesbrough.******Right back Sergio Ramos was bought out of his contract at Sevilla for a cool 27 million euros plus VAT, in the hope that he could be converted into a central defender. Everyone is agreed that the young Andalucian is a brave, hard-running, gutsy fullback, but he doesnt quite make the grade in the middle.******World Cup winning captain, FIFA World Player of the Year and Ballon Dor, Fabio Cannavaro had the most glowing CV of all. Surely, everyone said, he was the solution to Reals problems? But no, the Italian has been given a torrid time for his failing to live up to his billing. There is even talk that Real might want to ship him back to Italy.******Talented home-grown players like Francisco Pavon and Alvaro Mejia have also fallen by the way side in the past four years.******There’s a good piece over at All In White noting that the only centre-backs to thrive in recent years have been converted midfielders. Ivan Helguera is one of them but it has not been easy for him after he was sidelined for his outspoken criticisms in the Perez era, dropped from the Spain squad and left without a squad number at the start of this season.******If Christoph Metzelder and Pepe break the curse it will be no mean feat. ******Simon Baskett, Madrid