Real Madrid's attempt to start Galactico the return with the £56m capture of Kaka and Ronaldo may trigger the biggest summer spending spree in the history of football.
A list of players linked with a move to Real Madrid reads like a who's who of the modern game: David Villa, Franck Ribery, Cesc Fabregas, Samuel Eto'o, Sergio Aguero, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Carlos Tevez and plenty more besides.
Real, with Florentino Perez - the man who ushered in their first Galactico era at the start of the century - back as president, will not stop at Kaka as they seek to challenge Barcelona for Spanish supremacy next season.
Closer to home, the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea are set to stretch their financial muscles as their multi-billionaire owners showcase their recession-proof wealth.
One of Britain's leading sports business professors has stated he believes it is these three clubs that could prove to be the catalyst for a summer of spend, spend, spend.Potentially, I can see individual records being broken and the total spent by Premier League clubs being broken too,But I don't think it will be spent very widely. It will be highly skewed by two or three clubs and you are looking in particular at Man City and Chelsea. What is even more important, though, is what happens at Real Madrid. That will have a cascading effect on the rest of football - especially in Spain and in England, the two big leagues in Europe.
Returning as president at the Santiago Bernabeu after a three-year absence, Perez had hardly settled back into his old chair before reasserting his authority on the game.
His pursuit of Kaka, along with Ronaldo and repeated links with Valencia's Villa, Manchester United's Nemanja Vidic and Liverpool's Xabi Alonso have fired an early warning shot of supreme confidence.
This, after all, is the man who, in four consecutive summers starting from 2000, took Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo and David Beckham to the capital of Spain for a combined fee of about £132m.
Real have not only endured their first empty-handed season since 2006, but had to sit and watch arch rivals Barcelona claim an unprecedented treble of La Liga, Spanish Cup and the Champions League while winning hearts and minds for their style of football.
Perez wants what Barca have got, and the billionaire construction magnate with vast independent wealth will stop at nothing to get what he wants.
City, who tried an audacious swoop for Kaka in January and have been linked with a move for Real goalkeeper Iker Casillas among plenty of others, have even more money than the Madrid club to play with.
But they are not yet competing at the same level as their more illustrious European neighbours, as their differing levels of success in the chase for Kaka appear to have illustrated. The challenge for City owner Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan is to turn a side that finished 10th in the Premier League into one that can qualify for the Champions League - with no expense spared.
Spurs boss Harry Redknapp has tasted at first-hand City's phenomenal financial muscle as his bid for Gareth Barry was easily trumped by the Eastlands outfit.
Read more on this and other top articles at http://www.talkingfootball.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment