La Liga Loca

Marca report that one of their tremendously scientific and very useful polls advises that 75% of 'internautas' - a great word - reckon that the title will be residing in Barcelona, at the end of the season.

"......................................"

That's the noise inside Guti's head. Aside from the occasional burst of the Magic Roundabout theme.

July's D-Day for Spain's top dogs

Tuesday 24 June 2008 13:06

July 7 is shaping up to be a thrilling day in the worlds of both Real Madrid and Barcelona.

According to the current rumblings in the Spanish press - coming from that teeny, tiny, work experience run section not obsessed with Euro 2008 - it's set to be the date when both clubs could either be doing the footballing equivalent of blowing both their feet off, or setting off on a daisy-laden path to sporting glory.

Roberto Gomez, in Marca, has decided to deviate from his normal daily ramblings which consists of name dropping and plugging the businesses of his showbiz buddies.

The latest of these is a lucky gentleman who runs the 'Clinica Menorca' - an institution which presumably specialises in the removal of noses from rectums - and a restaurant in the suburbs of Madrid where Gomez is possibly gunning for free pie when he returns from the European Championships with the rest of the Spanish squad on Friday morning.

The man from Marca claims that July 7 is the happy, clappy day when Cristiano Ronaldo will be unveiled in Castle Greyskull by a beaming Ramón Calderón, now that Banco Santander have kindly agreed to lend the club the 85 million euros needed to tempt the diving diva to the Spanish capital.

All that is left now, says Gomez, is the tricky decision of what number to give the Portuguese poser. Ronaldo will have to prise his favoured number seven shirt from Raul's cold dead hands, whilst Ruud Van Nistelrooy is unlikely to hand over his number 17 without another scrap between the feuding footballers.


July 7 is also the date when Barcelona's Joan Laporta could well be joining the expanding ranks of the Spanish unemployed with the special referendum on his future at the Camp Nou set to be held the day before, according to Sport.

Barça sporting director, Marca Ingla has been wheeled out to make it clear to potential voters in the presidential poll that turfing out Laporta would be a very, very bad thing for the club.

"We won't be able to make transfers or signings until the start of the season and that leaves us at a disadvantage," warned Ingla.

However, Barcelona still have a couple of weeks left to make Arsenal that little bit richer, something that has been a long term strategy of the Catalan club. Having signed the likes of Petit, Overmars and Henry for a good 27 billion euros over the years, Laporta looks set to add 30 odd million to that total by bringing over Emmanuel Adebayor.

"This cannot carry on," complained Josep Maria Casanovas in Sport on the club's current spending. "(Barcelona) only have to show interest in a footballer and his price doubles."

This summer signing is in line with the clubs 'no galacticos' policy which saw club suit Ferran Soriano cocking a snook at their rivals dogged pursuit of Ronaldo.

"It does not worry us much if we sell a certain number of replica shirts or not," sniffed Barça's Vice President.


Recreativo's Florent Sinama-Pongolle must be a very confused footballer at the moment. If the French striker is currently reading the sports papers he would find himself either moving to Benfica or Atlético Madrid, or moving to Atlético Madrid and finding himself on loan to Racing Santander.

But this is the least of Atlético's worries as the club is undergoing extensive UEFA-pleasing rebuilding work to prepare for their upcoming one match Champions League run and also trying to track down the likes of Tomas 'mad dog' Ujfalusi and Jonny 'mad dog' Heitinga to get them to put pen to paper on their new contracts.

Getafe president, Angel Torres has explained their disappointing decision to appoint the distinctly unexciting Victor Muñoz as their replacement for the still jobless Michael Laudrup.

"We have bet on experience so we don't take too many risks," explained the Coliseum commander. "My idea of football is always think of the public," said a not-believing-his-luck Muñoz.

"It's a change of style with less glamour," admitted José Maria de la Rosa in AS tying his best to keep a stiff upper lip.

Spanish stars begin their moving and shaking

Wednesday 25 June 2008 12:28

Now that the sultry stickiness of the Spanish summer has finally landed like a sweat-filled piano, it's high time for the good people of Andalusia to take up their favourite pastimes - intensive thumb twiddling and illegally reclassifying public land to sell off to construction industry buddies for cash bonanza kick backs.

However, Sevilla for one, have gone against this stereotyping grain and have moved quicker than Ronaldinho at last orders to ensure that the Keita and Alves sized holes in their squad have been filled with suitable replacements.

The Andalusian club have got their mitts on Genoa right-back, Adboulay Konko for a cheeky 9 million euros and the Marseille born defender says that he couldn't be more ready for a stunning season of Primera action.


Konko arrives from Genoa to fill Dani Alves' amply-sized boots

"To be honest, I only know about about three or four teams," admitted Konko. "Don't worry," soothes La Liga Loca, that has never stopped Sky Sports' Spanish coverage. Or Marca.

Sevilla's other move to paper over the cracks left by their Barcelona bound battlers is the arrival of midfielder, Christian Koffi Ndri or 'Romaric' from Le Mans for around 8 million euros.

Over the weekend, Marca hinted that there were some behind the scenes bother at Betis with Darth de Lopera less than happy at Paco Chaparro's ongoing insistence of poo-pooing all his transfer hints.

The paper says that Paco only has his beady eyes set on players who will improve the current squad - which means that his boss' suggestions of Peter Luccin was turfed out of the suggestion box and into the bin where it rightly belongs.

One player who wants to leave the Spanish capital appears to be Rafael Sobis who, all things considered, has done bugger all in two years to justify his 9 million euro fee.

"He wants to know what's going on with his situation," barked the striker's agent, Jorge Machado as he prepared for a meeting with de Lopera armed only with holy water and a legion of vampire slayers.

"He has offers from Ukraine, Italy and Monaco," boasted the soon to be beheaded Machado on his client's glittering future.


Sobis: Keen to escape de Lopera's vampire lair

Atlético Madrid are still trying to work on their own ins and outs - not of the naughty Maniche variety - and are looking to offload Eller, Reyes and Seitaridis, amongst many others.

One of those is boy-band lookalike, Zé Castro, a player who sees his departure from the Calderón as a win-win situation for everyone.

"I've expressed my desire to leave the team, but I still have a contract," mused the defender, "I've not played much and if it stays the same, it won't be good for me."

Ridding themselves of José Antonio Reyes will be another mighty challenge for the rojiblancos with the Spanish market for whining, manager-abusing, red card attracting prima donna's fairly small. Until Sergio Ramos is sold to Chelsea, anyway.

Club president, Enrique Cerezo, had promised some 'surprises' with his signings this summer. La Liga Loca's hopeful guess of Matthew Broderick seems to be wide of the mark with Mundo Deportivo claiming that the downright weird Julio Baptista will be moving across town whilst AS are plumping for Werder Bremen's permanently want-away Brazilian, Diego.

Real Madrid go Dutch... again

Tuesday 05 August 2008 12:04

Having promised to pack his team with the finest young Spanish talent available, Real Madrid president Ramón Calderón has continued his great Iberian initiative by recruiting Rafael van der Vaart from Hamburg - the side's fifth Dutch player.

And this must surely be the tipping point for the music in the dressing room as it swings from the infernal sounds of flamin' flamenco to the Happy House stylings of 2 Unlimited.

Especially now that the Spanish-as-paella-and-tax-evasion Esteban Granero, Robert Soldado, José Callejón and now Dani Parejo have all been shifted out of the club.

Poor old EMO lovin' Sergio Ramos favourites, giant-haired Germanic rockers Tokio Hotel, will barely get a look in over the new season.

The former Hamburger, Van der Vaart, landed in Madrid on Monday night with wifey Sylvie in tow - a lady who now moves into the Real Madrid WAG top three, taking the place once held by 'Granero's bird' - nestled behind Mrs Iker and Mrs Raul.

Robinho, who appears to have swapped samba for Leonard Cohen on his ipod over the summer, has had a renewed rant against Real Madrid by complaining that he will be forced to watch the Brazilian Olympic team on television after the over 23-year-old was denied permission to join his buddies in Bejing.

"Real Madrid didn't want to release me," sulked the striker. "I'm very sorry about that." Probably not as sorry as the rest of his team-mates who have been forced to put up with the Incredible Sulk for the past three weeks or so.

Meanwhile, Marca have run a story claiming that "No one wants Robinho to leave." Aside from the 45.9% in their poll who suggest that he should sling his Brazilian hook to pastures new, that is.

AS are very impressed indeed at Barcelona's pre-season so far, which sees four wins from four and 19 goals scored with just four against. "Barça are looking very good. Once again." writes Alfredo Relaña admiringly.

Monday's Sport went even further, as to be expected, with an over stimulated Josep González boasting that "Laporta has taken to the air like a Phoenix reborn in all its glory."

The following day's edition has chosen to write several thousand words on why Samuel Eto'o is determined to stay at the Camp Nou for another season. And as is tradition with the Catalan-crazy paper, it contains not a single quote or shred of evidence to support such a claim.

Tough-talking Pep Guardiola, speaking after Barcelona's 5-2 over Chivas, maintains that he still wants Eto'o to be turfed out the club. "My opinion is the same," growled the coach. As it is Tuesday, Mundo Deportivo have selected Berbatov as the candidate most likely to come to the Camp Nou.

In a story that makes La Liga Loca as happy as Guti with a Lego set, Valencia's Ever Banega is reportedly looking for a move to Atlético Madrid where he is hoping to gain much more hands-on experience and really come into his own.

And where he will be possibly be united with Maniche, in what will be the Spanish capital's equivalent of Thelma and Louise. Or Laurel and Hardy.

In one of those "why are they only doing this now?" stories, Marca write that it will be Big Brother at Valencia this season. Sadly, the club will not be producing possibly one of the most entertaining reality shows ever conceived, but instead they boast that Unai Emery will be recording training sessions and matches.

In other news, the club has managed to go a whole week without sacking anyone or suffering a takeover by beings from another dimension, although Juan Villalonga's recent threat that "I will never abandon my struggle and I will keep going so I can reach the place that history has for me," must have one or two people in Mestalla spooked.

Valladolid's presidential action man

Friday 08 August 2008 15:18

It isn't often you see a Spanish club president out on a training field - except if it's to rip his manager a new one or if there are free biscuits going.

Most are too wheezy and sleazy to beat a path from either the boardroom buffet or restaurant to take part in any kind of energetic action.

The only time that the multi-chinned Deportivo head honcho, Augusto Lendoiro, ever breaks into a sweat is when looking at his club's account books.

Nevertheless, this week Valladolid's Carlos Suárez was pictured in Marca joining in the pre-season fun with the rest of the squad - without the aid of nurses too. But that's because this particular president is not your typical stuffed shirt.

With a vague resemblance to nut-job Queens of the Stone Age singer Josh Homme, Suárez, at the age of just 40, is one of the youngest big-wigs in the Spanish game - by a good 60 years or so.


Carlos Suárez: "OK if I join in lads?"

And as a former basketball player, he is someone who knows a thing or two about sport - unlike most of his presidential brethren who happened to have made killings (in a financial sense, or course) in the real estate market or possess very rich business buddies to fund them.

"When I started here, there were players older than me like Eusebio or Caminero," points out Suárez when asked why he likes to join his minions in their training sessions. "I'm not doing exercises like (mad Alaves man) Piterman did because you have to have an enormous respect for their profession."

When La Liga Loca was banished to Valladolid for the day last season to find a footballer bored or lonely enough to talk to it, the blog had the opportunity to see Suárez in his element - hanging about the dressing rooms, chain smoking and chatting away to players. And that's what makes him one of the more likeable presidents in Spain - although that's not too hard an achievement.

"It's his past in sport and his youth that makes him a president that's not just close to his players but also to those who look after the team," write Marca approvingly.

Suárez says that he models the management style of the club on the most grounded, normal, professional, vaguely sane outfits in the Primera, Villarreal. "They couldn't have achieved more, with less," sighed the Valladolid man, admiringly.

Another one of the more affable figures in the game in Spain has been spouting forth this week - Joaquín Caparrós. Pictured in Friday's AS, standing in a lake for some unexplained reason, the Athletic Bilbao manager has been revealing why he is putting his players through a 16-match pre-season regime taking on the likes of Charlton and Colchester.



"The objective is to have a competitive level. With tension and living football day to day. In this way we will start the season like rockets," burbled Caparrós whose team do look like they may be one of the fittest - and physical - of the new campaign, especially as the club has recruited Dr Antonio Escribano to the cause - he of the half-time energy milkshakes at Sevilla.

So far, everything seems to be going to plan for Athletic who have won six of their nine games played. But the hyper-mad Caparrós will not be resting until the end of the season.

"We don't stop. We train, we make reports, we watch every player, we see the youth team games. We're on top of everything," boasted the man now known as Jokin in Bilbao.

Trusting agents about as far as Xavi could throw them, La Liga Loca is expecting the announcement of David Villa's transfer from Valencia any day now. The striker's money man, José Luis Tamorgo, broke away from contract talks on Wednesday to announce that "Villa feels the colours, is happy and hopes to stay here."

A day later Tamorgo revealed that "I can guarantee that he will stay" - a giant come-and-get-him plea if ever there was one.

The same cannot be said for the forgotten man of football Joaquín, who has had his demands for an improved deal laughed out of Mestalla on the grounds that he has done bugger all to justify it.

"We didn't believe that he deserves a better contract," shrugged Vice President Fernando Gómezon, before hurling the wasteful winger into a dumpster.

Joan Laporta has travelled from New York to Tashkent to continue Barça's increasingly peculiar love-fest with Uzbekistan side PFC Bunyodkor, by signing a co-operation agreement with the club.

The Uzbek giants first found fame by claiming that they had captured the signature of Samuel Eto'o - and they don't seem to have been too far from the truth considering that the Cameroon striker, Andrés Iniesta and Carles Puyol have all been sent to the former Russian republic to meet and greet.

Mundo Deportivo have added a highly entertaining instant English translation feature to their website which will keep La Liga Loca amused on those slow news days. Like today.

First up in what will surely become a regular feature is Francesc Aguilar who is either writing about Samuel Eto'o or has gone a little off topic.

"Nobody doubts the tremendous quality of Cameroonian crack. It is impossible to find on the market."



Too true, too true.

Real Madrid “optimise media relations”

Thursday 21 August 2008 12:24
In many ways, Real Madrid’s decision to permanently block journalists’ access to their players after training should be seen as a blessing in disguise for the Spanish footballing press.

After all, as Marca’s Roberto Gómez puts it, the club is merely “optimising relations with the media, members and supporters.”

Yes, it may mean that his colleagues have to work that little bit harder to make up stories, but it does free them from the humiliation of being herded into a pen just to watch ipod-clutching multi-billionaire footballers breeze past as they head for their Batmobiles.

The lethargic La Liga Loca’s one and only trip to this unseemly scrum was an odd experience.

The blog was creeped out more than a little by the very unnerving Julio Baptista, was told by Wesley Sneijder that he, himself, was the player of the year and discovered that Royston Drenthe answers the simplest of questions with the same thought and intensity given to the ‘Sylvie Van der Vaart, your mother, on the Titanic, one life jacket’ conundrum.

In theory, the Spanish tabloid papers should have been very much with the public fury on the club’s new direction. But they have been curiously silent on the affair with AS dedicating just a teeny tiny paragraph to the decision and Marca allowing, groveller-in-chief, Gómez to more or less reproduce the official statement given on the club’s website.

La Liga Loca’s evil wish to see the relegation of those super-smugsters Villarreal, just to see the look on their faces, looks like coming true. The club have lost their last three friendlies, the most recent of which was a 5-1 hammering by Valladolid in the Madrigal.

“We are too comfortable,” fumed Javi Venta. “After being second last year, we think that matches are won on their own.”

It was an opinion shared by Diego López who predicted that “we won’t win anything,” in the new season if his team’s current form continues.

Technically, Villarreal didn’t win anything last year, apart from plaudits. Or the year before that. In fact their list of past glories is shorter than Guti’s attention span.

Villarreal’s slump has whipped the Marca message-boarders into a feeding-frenzy with one particular keyboard-bashing baiter shouting in capitals that “you are not gods, you are flesh and bone!”

The Yellow Submarine may be suffering more metaphor-mangling turbulence before the season starts with the departure of Marcus Senna to Luis Aragones’ Fenerbahce.

The ex-Brazilian’s agent confirms that there are talks between the two clubs with Senna himself admitting that “Luis asked me if I would like to work with him and I said it would be a pleasure.”

Espanyol manager Tintin ‘sacked in September’ Márquez is blissfully unconcerned about his team’s recent tour of the Netherlands where they failed to win a game.

“I’m happy with the way things have gone,” chirped the former number two. If that’s true then he’ll be dizzy with delight with the campaign to come if being beaten is how he gets his footballing kicks.

Pep ‘Pep’ Guardiola has got the managerial seal of approval from former Spain international buddy, Michel Salgado. The creaky old full-back oozed that “the way he views football as a player and the way he exudes the Barcelona spirit, I believe he’s the perfect choice to coach Barça.”

Elsewhere in the Spanish capital, Maniche is continuing his charm offensive to woo both the fans of the Atlético Madrid and his boss, Javier Aguirre.

“I want to stay here and show the manager things that I’ve not yet shown,” warned the big-boned-bottler.

La Liga Loca can only guess that mooning will be the chosen method of protest the next time he is taken to task by Aguirre for being in no fit state to play a game of football.

And that’s something Atlético’s soon-to-be shellshocked Mexican manager will never recover from.

Lock up your daughters, Atleti are back!

Thursday 28 August 2008 12:00

Merciful Zeus! Atlético Madrid have done it!

La Liga Loca can finally pack their lunch box, hand over the bus fare and wave at them from its front door wiping tears from its eyes. The rojiblancos are going out into the Big Wide World. The rojiblancos have grown up on us.

Even now the blog is flicking through the photo album, wondering how quickly time has passed.

Look, there’s Atleti losing to some Hungarians in the Intertoto Cup. And who can forget the moment when they failed to score against Bolton in 180 minutes of football. Happy days.

La Liga Loca is a little shamefaced this morning, and must confess that it didn’t think that Atleti would make it through their Champions League death match against Schalke.

It was all doomy and gloomy and felt that the legendary guile and cunning of the dastardly Germans would be too much for the legendary complete lack of guile and cunning of the rojiblancos.

As La Liga Loca approached the Vicente Calderón on Wednesday night, it could smell The Fear. Even simian singer Ian Brown was doing laps of the stadium on a tiny bike.

It could also smell lager. And an awful lot of jazz cigarettes.

But from the opening minute of the match in front of a boisterous and barmy home crowd, you could feel that everything was going to be ok.

Ujfalusi and Heitinga had everything all under control, Perea looked less terrified than normal at the thought of touching the ball and the midfield was very nifty.

Atlético Madrid were calm, comfortable and composed - a phrase rarely used with this particular team. Rather like “Deportivo really are the entertainers of the league!” and “Betis must be everyone’s second favourite club!”

The star of the Champions League show was the majestic Kun Agüero who proved that Gianina is not the only aspect of Maradona that is rubbing off on him these days.

The Argentine striker danced and pranced his way though the opposition defence in the same way that Arizmendi doesn’t.

Even the crowd played a blinder on Wednesday night with the delightful Atleti Ultras managing to overcome their normal testosterone-fuelled urges to hurl seats, launch firecrackers, chuck bottles, and ram raid opposition fans.

However, to make sure that they didn’t go back to Mummy all tense and uptight, they decided to have a big old rumble amongst themselves, instead.

With the omnipresent, clipboard-wielding UEFA officials hanging around, even the “Factory Air Club” lap dancing advert was pulled from the scoreboard advertising, making Maniche’s decision to take a pen and paper out onto the pitch with him look more than a little silly.

The same precision and order that Atlético Madrid displayed on the pitch disappeared completely during the post match press conferences.

While stunned Schalke boss Fred Rutten was fielding question number 14 from the inquisitive German press, a lady from TVE interrupted him and told him to button it as they wanted to hear from Javier Aguirre and talk to the players.

The Schalke press officer just shrugged repeatedly, gave them the mental finger and ensured that he called on another 15 journalists much to the rancour of the local rojiblancos press team - none of whom spoke a word of English nor German which did not ease the prickly Teutonic tensions.


"Pile on..." Atletico celebrate Champions League progression

By all accounts there were fun and games in the Real Madrid press room too, with Bernd Schuster in fine sulky, tutting form.

As usual the German coach looked as if he enjoyed his job as much as Guti relishes the idea of reading as he discussed a friendly game against Sporting Lisbon where Real Madrid were 5-1 up by half-time.

“Our rivals helped us a lot because they thought the game started at 11," deadpanned Bernd.

On growing tired over the endless questions concerning Robinho, Santi Cazorla and David Villa, the Real Madrid coach announced that “I’m tired now and I want to go home.”

Considering it would have been close to one in the morning at the time, La Liga Loca stands by Bernd.

Unsurprisingly the knives are out for Ramón Calderón on Thursday.

The daisy petal-pulling La Liga Loca is well used to being rejected twice in one day. Normally with restraining orders. But this is a sensation that Real Madrid have had to get used to suddenly.

Despite Marca’s Roberto Gómez crawling claims that the Real Madrid president is so honourable he would never, ever, ever make a bid for a Primera player less than two weeks before the close of the transfer window, the Real Madrid president made a bid for two players, less than two weeks before the close of the transfer window.

And as everyone knows by now, both failed.

Valencia president, Vicente Soriano had a pop at his capital city rival by pouting that “Madrid has the right to make an offer until the last moment but I don’t like their methods.”

Equally as stinging was Villarreal big cheese Fernando Roig, who noted that “when I want to sign someone, I do it directly and to their face.”


Cazorla: Another reported Madrid target fails to materialise

So what does Gómez have to say about all this? Nada, Nowt, Nichts, that's what.

Instead, the freebie-loving funster wrote about his big day out at the Vicente Calderón where he chose to focus on the stunning news that José María Bernal, “the man responsible for the territorial co-ordination of the Community of Madrid,” was at the Champions League game. Whats more, Gómez mentioned him before Maradona.

Sport have leapt upon Real Madrid’s transfer issues with José Luis Carazo attacking Calderón’s “verbal incontinence where one day it’s yes and another day something else.”

On a sadder note, it was one year ago today that Sevilla and Spain’s Antonio Puerta passed away after collapsing on the pitch during game against Getafe the previous weekend.

A suitable time to enjoy this moment of brilliance from Puerta's 'diamond left foot' once again.

Real Madrid Super Spot the Difference

Thursday 28 August 2008 16:00

Back when La Liga Loca was just a nipper, a mere squiggle scrawled on the kitchen floor with a crayon rather than the fully-fledged, typed-
out-on-a-computer-and-everything uberblog that it is these days, it used to like doing Spot the Difference puzzles.

But very soon, Little La Liga Loca - for that, readers, was its name back then - got very, very bored. They were just too easy.

Two pictures of a footballer with five subtle changes, which sounds tough until you realised, as Little La Liga Loca did, that they were always the same bloody five subtle changes.

Gah!

Football player loses one of the bands on his sock, football player's shirt no longer has club badge, football player's boot no longer has tick/swoosh/stripes on side, ball that football player is kicking no longer says Mitre on it, football player's shorts have vanished and his dinglie-danglies are there for all to see!

Bor-ing!






So, La Liga Loca has decided to start offering a proper Spot the Difference competition, one that will have you scratching your heads for weeks, like a pack of lice-infested infants.

Here goes, spot the difference between this:

1:

Real Madrid president Ramón Calderón has proven himself to be a real gentleman. Last week he spoke to [Sevilla president] José María Del Nido to tell him he wouldn’t sign Capel or Luis Fabiano [by paying the buy-out clause]. He told [Atlético president] Enrique Cerezo that he should relax: he wasn’t going to take Aguero off him.

Yesterday, he told Fernando Roig that he wasn’t going to take Villa off Valencia, because it wouldn’t be fair on them. "I would never do to others what I wouldn't want done to me," Calderón said. Gentlemanliness and class, two characteristics of Calderón that are rare in football but that he has made his badge of honour. If only others would learn from him.

[MARCA, Monday] (And for good measure, Marca on Wednesday added: "Calderon is demonstrating a gentlemanliness and decency without precedent in football by not going for any players in the final two weeks of the transfer market.”)


Calderon: All about the gentlemanliness and decency

And this ...

2:

Real Madrid president Ramón Calderón and Villarreal president Fernando Roig met at the Valencia Grand Prix:

Calderón: "Fernando, we're going to go for Cazorla. It's what the coach wants."

Roig: "Ramón, don't screw me over. Don't do that to me."

Calderón: "We’ve got the money and we’re going to pay the buy-out clause [which means Villarreal can't do anything to stop it]. If we can agree a deal with the player we’re signing him."

[MARCA, Tuesday.]

Answers on a postcard to: Super Spot the Difference Competition, Grown
Up La Liga Loca, That bin outside VIPs, Madrid.

The winner gets a signed shirt from Real Madrid’s latest star signing, Cristiano Rona … er, Santi Cazorla. No? Sorry. Hang on. David Villa! Yes, that’s it: David Villa.

Or someone.

Only one winner in Real Madrid debacle: Raul (again)

Tuesday 02 September 2008 10:43
In the end 40 million had a rather pleasing symmetry to it.

That was the amount of cash – in Euros – that Man City dumped into the Bernabeu backyard for the whining services of Robinho.

That's the amount of broken promises Ramón Calderón is due to rack up by the time his potty presidential tenure runs out in 2010.

And that's the number of times the Real Madrid president has popped up in the media over the past fortnight to spout headline-enticing claptrap.

Monday was a truly spectacular day in the professional life of a rampant Ramón – a man who went through so many violent U-turns, he nearly drilled himself into the ground.

After promising Bernd Schuster late last week that Robinho would not be sold under his presidential nose, but instead be forced to buy out his contract, he duly flogged Robinho to Manchester City.

Calderón claims the sale was inspired by humanitarian reasons but La Liga Loca suspects it was just to see the Brazilian’s face fall faster than Diego Capel at the thought of years of rain-sodden runs and being yelled at by Sparky Hughes.

If that was the case, then all power to Calderón’s Armani-clad elbow.

After promising – according to Marca’s Roberto Gómez – that he would never, ever, ever nick another Spanish club’s players two weeks before the end of the transfer window, Calderón made yet another bid to buy David Villa on Monday afternoon.

That’s according to the Valencia sporting director of the week, Fernando Gómez, who revealed that the Real Madrid boss called Vicente Soriano to make a €55 million offer for the striker.

“The call happened but there was no time to react and Valencia, having already presented the renewal of Villa’s contract, were not going to sell the player,” said Gómez in Marca.

Surely, the Valencia man must be telling porky pies?

After all, Calderón said on Sunday that any signing at this late stage would be “an improper improvisation”. What’s more, the Real Madrid president also claimed, on Monday night, that no offers were ever made to Villa and Santi Cazorla. Instead, “Real Madrid said no to them.”

La Liga Loca suggests someone's pants are very much on fire.

The Spanish press are poking their nose into what has been a ludicrous but enormously entertaining summer for Real Madrid on the transfer market.

AS editor, Alfredo Relaño, has branded the club’s on-their-knees-pretty-please last-minute bid for Villa as the "last joke of the summer” and blamed the factional infighting between, on the one side, sporting director Pedja Mijatovic and director José Sanchez, and on the other, manager Bernd Schuster and nobody's-really-sure-what-his-job is Miguel Angel Portugal.

Tomás Guasch writes that “the joy of May, when they beat Barcelona 4-1 and won the league has disappeared in 90 delirious days.”

But pity poor old Tomás Roncero who ends his half-hearted column by writing with Schuster mimicking, “I’m tired and I just want to go home”.

Meanwhile, the considerably more grown-up but considerably less entertaining El Pais claims that “the sale of Robinho is a victory for Mijatovic and a defeat for the manager” and writes that the Madrid sporting director “never wanted Schuster to be coach and he believes that he can do without him”.

The paper reports that behind the scenes, the club is a highly dysfunctional family when it comes to the transfer market.

For any player to come to the club, they write, there needs to be a once-in-a-million-years-alignment between Calderón, Mijatovic, Schuster, Portugal, Sánchez and Rául - a player whose opinion is rated considerably higher than that of Schuster’s, according to the paper.

A Spanish radio station, interviewing a fluey Calderón, on Monday night, picked away at a similar theme by asking the Real Madrid president if the club captain had vetoed the purchase of David Villa – the man who nabbed his spot in the Spanish team, let’s not forget.

“Raúl would never block anyone coming... I have spoken to him on a number of subjects but not this.”

Last week, Barcelona-based Sport ran a story – admittedly of a dubious nature – claiming that Madrid were going to make an audacious bid to bring Samuel Eto’o back to the Spanish capital, but that the move was blocked by the former international who did not fancy a season of bench-warming.

There is only one winner out of the whole Madrid mess. But an awful lot of losers.

Robinho is forced to spent the next several years out of the limelight and out of the Champions League with Manchester City. And that was a very avoidable situation.

The spin-doctoring (and very much for hire in this capacity) La Liga Loca suggests that a humble apology to the fans and especially to Bernd Schuster from Robinho, the sacking of his agent, the confession of being badly advised and a couple of cheeky goals and all would have been forgotten.

Schuster has to run a campaign that his president has now branded “a year of consolidation” knowing that his opinion at the club is completely without value.

Calderón has burned more bridges than a retreating Russian battalion and has been made to look like the George Bush of La Liga – incompetent, friendless and a bit thick.

Instead, it is Raúl who comes out on top and smelling of smoked ham – a player who knows that he can sit and drink tea for 90 minutes for every game of the year without ever suffering the consequences, knowing that there is nobody out there to replace him.