Real Madrid has other clubs raising stakes
Florentino Perez has turned what already promised to be an interesting summer in the transfer market into a chaotic free-for-all as the world’s leading clubs squabble among themselves over the delicacies left behind on the table.
By forking over $131 million for Portuguese winger Cristiano Ronaldo and $94 million for Brazilian playmaker Kaka, Perez, the president of Real Madrid, has skewed everything.
Suddenly, deals that looked likely to be made are on hold. Players who seemed certain to be moving elsewhere are being prevented from doing so by clubs playing a bluffing game in the hope of securing a similar astronomical price.
Call it high-stakes soccer poker, with no assurance that anyone will emerge a winner.
For instance, it appeared last week to be only a matter of days before Spanish striker David Villa joined Ronaldo and Kaka at Real Madrid. But then Valencia President Manuel Llorente announced that Villa was “not for sale” and would stay with the debt-ridden Spanish club.
Of course, Llorente gave himself an out. He might, he said, be open to a “scandalously” high offer. In other words, more than the $52 million Real Madrid already is said to have been dangling in Valencia’s direction.
In Germany, Bayern Munich is playing much the same game.
There, French midfielder Franck Ribery has stated that he would like to move on, and if that move entails swapping Munich’s snow for Madrid’s sunshine, so much the better.
Perez, in an ingenious move, has not only put former French star Zinedine Zidane on his payroll as a presidential advisor but has enlisted his help in landing Ribery, who is valued at somewhere around $100 million by Bayern Munich.
“I am all for Ribery joining Real Madrid and I will do everything to make it possible,” Zidane recently told Le Parisien.
Complicating matters for Real Madrid is the fact that Manchester United now has plenty of cash on hand from the Ronaldo sale and is not at all put off by Bayern Munich’s asking price for Ribery. The success that fellow Frenchman Eric Cantona enjoyed at Manchester United might cause Ribery to lean that way too.
While the pursuit of Villa and Ribery goes on, other dominoes have been slow in falling. There is a pause in the spending spree as player agents crisscross the continent trying to make a killing while the tabloids have a field day by printing rumors . . . and rumors of rumors.
As Massimo Moratti, Inter Milan’s president, neatly summed it up: “During the transfer window, a headline in a newspaper is enough to transform groundless rumors into truth.”
All the same, one change is locked in stone.
Argentine striker Carlos Tevez, now a free agent, has thumbed his nose at a five-year, $180,000-a-week contract offered by English champion Manchester United and is trying to line up a move to either Manchester City or Chelsea.
Also seeking greener pastures is Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who has grown bored with Italian champion Inter Milan even though he is the Italian league’s highest-paid player at a reported $15 million a year and was the top goal scorer in Serie A last season.
“Many people criticized me when I arrived in Italy,” he told Sky Italia after Inter’s fourth successive title was won. “They said I was a fantastic player but couldn’t score goals. Now I am the Serie A top scorer. I showed them who I am. I can’t do any better than this. I really don’t know what else I can still do in Italy.”
But the brakes have been put on Ibrahimovic’s moving anywhere because Inter has said it would expect to receive the same $131 million for the Swede that Real Madrid paid for Ronaldo.
If Real Madrid balks at the asking price, Chelsea might not, especially if it can get a substantial discount by sending Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba to Inter Milan to join his former coach, Jose Mourinho, as part of the deal.
Whether Chelsea would also want Inter’s Brazilian defender Maicon, who has a $55-million price tag, is unclear.
Another club that had been interested in Ibrahimovic was Barcelona, the defending Spanish and European champion. It dangled Cameroon striker Samuel Eto’o plus cash in front of Inter Milan in a failed bid to land Ibrahimovic.
The deal might still happen, but with Manchester City apparently willing to splash out a substantial sum for Eto’o, nothing is certain for the moment.
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Mexico gets ready
Chances are, Mexico Coach Javier Aguirre will be tuning in to watch today’s Confederations Cup final between the U.S. and Brazil in South Africa. After all, Aguirre’s team will be playing the Americans in a key World Cup qualifier on Aug. 12 in Mexico City.
This is the last chance Aguirre will have to see the “real” U.S. squad because Coach Bob Bradley has plucked 23 players, the majority out of MLS, for the CONCACAF Gold Cup that begins Friday.
The only players on the U.S. roster who are currently with the first-string in Johannesburg are Freddy Adu, Charlie Davies, Heath Pearce and Luis Robles, and only Davies has played any Confederations Cup minutes.
Aguirre’s squad, which will play Guatemala in a friendly in San Diego this evening (5 p.m., Telemundo), will play Nicaragua, Panama and Guadeloupe in the Gold Cup first round, while the U.S. will play Grenada, Honduras and Haiti.
Even with a largely MLS-based squad, the U.S. should be able to defend its title.
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A star-crossed summer
This summer, North American fans will have the rare opportunity to see five of Europe’s finest teams in person rather than simply on television. So goes the sales pitch.
But with AC Milan, for example, expected to play four games in eight days, reserves will be doing the heavy lifting. Or perhaps Milan can get David Beckham on loan again to help out.
In any event, here is the schedule:
*--* Date Match Location July 19 Galaxy vs AC Milan Home Depot Center, Carson July 19 Club America vs Inter Milan Stanford Stadium, Palo Alto July 21 Chelsea vs Inter Milan Rose Bowl, Pasadena July 22 AC Milan vs Club America Georgia Dome, Atlanta July 24 AC Milan vs Chelsea M&T Bank Stadium, Baltimore July 26 Inter Milan vs AC Milan Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Mass. July 26 Chelsea vs Club America Cowboys Stadium, Arlington, Texas Aug. 1 Galaxy vs Barcelona Rose Bowl, Pasadena Aug. 7 Toronto FC vs Real Madrid BMO Field, Toronto Aug. 8 Barcelona vs Chivas de Candlestick Park, San Guadalajara Francisco Aug. 9 D.C. United vs Real Madrid FedEx Field, Landover, Md. *--*
-- Grahame L. Jones
