The new 'Florentino Era" in Madrid has just begun

[Elano]

After the signing of Kakà.....now is the time of Villa 


and its nowhere near finished 

[Invincible]

Are you sure you support Inter Milan?

[Elano]

Are you sure you support Inter Milan?

SURE.
i'm just "happy" to see kaka out of the italian league and cristiano ronaldo in madrid soon 
i love football,and the new real will be something like a "dream team".
like it or not 

[Meho]

I'm a Real fan since I was 10 years old and I'm happy as fuck that Kaka signed because we need a creative player in the midfield, we didn't have anyone since Zidane retired. With that being sad, I don't want Ronaldo in the team, I'd rather have Villa and D. Silva. But they need to chill with these transfers, I'd sell all the Dutch players and start building the team slowly in long term effect but that's never going to happen with Real.

[K.Dub]

Wow, I'm impressed.

[Elano]

I'm a Real fan since I was 10 years old and I'm happy as fuck that Kaka signed because we need a creative player in the midfield, we didn't have anyone since Zidane retired. With that being sad, I don't want Ronaldo in the team, I'd rather have Villa and D. Silva. But they need to chill with these transfers, I'd sell all the Dutch players and start building the team slowly in long term effect but that's never going to happen with Real.

Kaka is a great signing but he's not zidane,keep that in mind...
All the dutch players will be sold,don't worry. I don't know about Silva,but you can consider Villa already a Real player (imo even Silva....).
A part from all these players,perez should buy at least 3 big names for the defense....and at least a big for the midfield (xabi alonso would be perfect,imagine alonso and silva  )

[Meho]

They already have Diarra in the middle, he's great, underrated like Makelele was.

[Elano]

They already have Diarra in the middle, he's great, underrated like Makelele was.

Diarra is nothing but a good midfielder,nothing more.Xabi Alonso is something else,really...

[Elano]

Florentino Perez defends Real Madrid's spending spree on Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo

Florentino Perez believes that spending a combined £136 million on Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo will strengthen Real Madrid financially.

Manchester United yesterday accepted an offer of £80 million for Ronaldo, shortly after Real spent around £56 million to sign Kaka from AC Milan. As Perez, the club president, ushers in a new galactico era at the Bernabeu, they are unlikely to be the last two stars to arrive this summer. David Villa, David Silva, Franck Ribery and Xabi Alonso are among the names to have been linked.

As well as the transfer fees, the wages are vast, with Ronaldo expected to be paid £107 million over six years. Questions are being asked about how Real can afford the transfer splurge and whether they risk being submerged in debt, but the president believes that the players will end up paying for themselves.

When asked about the possibility of Madrid being saddled with big debts, Perez told La Gazzetta dello Sport:“On the contrary, we believe we can improve our accounts by aiming for three goals - increasing ticket sales, increasing bank loans and increasing the club’s economic value. “Real Madrid takes about 400 million [euros] a year, the fruit of three sources of income - a third from ticket sales, a third from television rights and a third from merchandising.”

Perez even thinks that Ronaldo and Kaka will prove "cheap". Last week he said that stars have the potential to generate income that can more than compensate for inflated transfer fees. In his previous spell as Madrid's president, between 2000 and 2006, he sanctioned the signings of Luis Figo, David Beckham, Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane. “What I am sure of is that which seems expensive is the cheapest,” Perez said.

Discussions regarding Villa, the Valencia striker, are believed to be at an advanced stage.“I want to relaunch the tradition of Real Madrid, which is to be faithful in providing a good show and giving the fans enthusiasm,” Perez added today. “In order to do that we have to focus on three crucial pillars - to play with great world-famous players, great Spanish players and great youth players. I want to recreate a Real Madrid that makes history.”


 

[KURUPTION-81]

I read today that REal have said thwy are unlikely to get Villa and Ribery so expect to see them in a Real top next week !

[Paul]

They already have Diarra in the middle, he's great, underrated like Makelele was.

Diarra is nothing but a good midfielder,nothing more.Xabi Alonso is something else,really...

agreed

[Elano]

Kaka and Ronaldo were just for starters, but the clubs splashing the cash as never before still expect a payback

These are recessionary times, but no one in charge of the wallets at Europe's footballing behemoths will take heed this summer. The coming weeks promise the greatest splash of the game's apparently endless reserves of transfer cash since the sport began. It also means that fans everywhere are in for some ride once the continent's leagues kick off again in August.

The Premier League circus will have a Manchester United team that may offer supporters a forward line of Franck Ribéry, Karim Benzema, Antonio Valencia and Wayne Rooney to help them forget a certain 24-year-old Portuguese winger. Manchester City, their fierce rivals whose lightning-quick £12m acquisition of Gareth Barry 10 days ago was a telling marker, could have Carlos Tevez, Samuel Eto'o and Robinho as their Three Amigos, courtesy of their sheikh's riches. And Chelsea, bankrolled by their Russian billionaire, are fighting to land, among others, Atlético Madrid's Sergio Agüero and Alexandre Pato from Milan for around £45m apiece.

Over in Spain, meanwhile, it is galáctico redux time at Real Madrid. Their frontline will read Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo and AN Other, most probably David Villa of Valencia – at a total cost of close to £175m. Florentino Pérez, the Madrid president and founder of the galáctico concept, claims he has €300m (£255m) to spend this summer, so he still has at least £60m with which to gazump United and steal Bayern Munich's Ribéry or Benzema from Lyon. Wherever those two end up, French and German football are about to benefit from a healthy cash transfusion.

The week that football will never forget began on Monday with the £56m transfer of Kaka from Milan to Madrid. It took precisely three days for excitement over the former world player of the year's move to become passé, once United announced the acceptance of a world-record £80m bid from Real for Ronaldo.

Yet what is remarkable about this pecuniary incontinence from Real is that, in what are well-documented hard times, the club also has debts of £494m. Xavier Sala-i-Martín, Barcelona's economic director, voiced football's most pertinent question when he wailed: "How can a football club have so much money bearing in mind the current economic situation and the politics of credit restriction in all banks?"

Pérez has a long and short answer. "Shirt sales will fund the deal," is the succinct one, which suggests a staggering number of Kaka and Ronaldo replica tops will have to be shifted. His more prosaic explanation, meanwhile, goes: "We can improve our accounts by aiming for three goals – increasing ticket sales, bank loans, and the club's economic value."

Madrid certainly have two advantages that, say, United, Bayern or Milan do not: government backing and lucrative membership schemes. "I was sat with senior figures at Barcelona three years ago and they were very unhappy with the whole galácticos mark one era," says Simon Chadwick, professor of sports business strategy and marketing at Coventry University. "That basically came about because of the property deal in which Pérez sold the central Madrid training ground [in 2001 for around £205m] and used the money to build the new site near the airport.

"The deal was artificially handled by the local government. There are now two big towers where the old training ground was – this is prime estate and the state clearly had a role in that. And they have 88,000 members who pay €115 a year [€10.1m in total] – that's a big chunk of money that, say, United or Milan do not have."

Chadwick adds that Madrid must have borrowed greatly against future projected income. "What's particularly interesting about these deals for Kaka and Ronaldo is the extent to which they may well be underwritten by forecasts of revenue from overseas markets, because at the moment clubs like United and Madrid may only generate less than 5% [of their total] from this.

"Who knows where the borrowing has come from – the state, financial institutions – but a significant [part of their strategy] will have come from using Kaka and Ronaldo as the focus of an aggressive commercial strategy over the next five years. It's no coincidence that Real Madrid haven't just signed good players but world figures."

Where, then, does this all leave Sir Alex Ferguson as he plots how to replace Ronaldo by spending the minimum of £100m he has to throw at the problem? Part of the conundrum is that rivals now know exactly how much they can stretch United's largesse in the market. Bayern Munich's general manager, Uli Hoeness, is already on-message. "We would only talk if they were prepared to do crazy things," he says of any potential deal to buy Ribéry.

Crazy seems a fitting title for football's latest chapter – one that has only just begun. Last summer a record £500m went on transfers in the Premier League, while an equally astronomical €4.81bn was paid to the players who entertain each week in Europe's big five leagues. Expect even these figures to appear quaint once the transfer window shuts on 1 September.