Does anyone care about Cristiano Ronaldo transfer rumours anymore?
In the week after Cristiano Ronaldo wrote off his £200,000 Ferrari there must be pressing financial reasons for Ronaldo to want to join Real Madrid. Otherwise why would he publically pledge his allegiance to Manchester United, whilst at the same time, according to Guillem Balague, privately agree to join Real Madrid. Again.
Balague is a pundit that Sky Sports wheel out to add gravitas to their Spanish Primera Liga or Spanish transfer coverage; a bit like The BBC employing Mark Lawrenson. He also writes for AS which along with Marca seem to generate about half of the transfer tittle-tattle in the tabloids these days. For some reason this has lead the BBC to offer him a prefix of 'respected' - would anyone do the same for Lawrenson?
To be honest I do think that Ronaldo will go to Madrid one day, and given his current form any kind of world record fee would be generous.
But that day will probably be after Sir Alex Ferguson has left or if his contract hits two years to go with an extension unlikely to happen. Say the summer of 2010.
But according to Balague, the transfer will happen in 2009 or Ronaldo will suffer financially (how many ferraris worth of cash is not mentioned). And although Real Madrid will sign Ronaldo for €85m-€115m, reading between the lines this would include wages of around €60m over five years and an agents fee of €8m. This would leave between €17m and €47m for the transfer - which does seem a bit low. If Ronaldo remains subdued I think United could quickly tire of the circus that follows him if offered £50m (€60m) or so - but a resurgence of his form in the second half of the season would demonstrate just how irreplaceable he is.
Ferguson will decide if Ronaldo stays or goes in the summer, and will (99% certain) opt to keep the best player in the world for at least another year. I'll believe this transfer only when Ronaldo signs a bit of paper agreed between the two clubs, not on the basis of an agreement that Balague admits 'exists in a purely verbal form at the moment' i.e. worth about as much as a Jonathon Ross joke on the radio.
