| 12.08.2008 |
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| Apologies for starting this year's Bundesliga blog off with an entry based on ugly rumours (by which I mean allegations and not ex-British PM Tony Blair's ill-fated Stones-esque college band). Since Euro 2008 ended, I've been feeding my soccer hunger by trawling my favourite sites for any morsel of information that can keep me sated. Most of the time, this means teasing myself with half-truths and hearsay from the transfer gossip pages. After praising (enter the name of chosen deity here) for the end of the endless self-perpetuated fluff about Cristiano Ronaldo's on-off-on-finally-off move to Real Madrid, I stumbled in shock at the new flight of fantasy that had bubbled to the surface of the rumour mire: "AC Milan's Brazil star Kaka is set to join Chelsea before the end of August in a world-record 99 million-euro deal" (source: various newspapers, quoted by BBC Sport). Now, Kaka is more than a little bit good, I'm sure most of you will agree. The AC Milan and Brazil midfielder has put in some quite luminous performances for the rossoneri and the Selecao since making his senior debut for Sao Paulo in 2001. He has since helped Milan win a cabinet full of silverware and was a bit-part player in Brazil's 2002 World Cup win before starring in their 2005 Confederations Cup success. He won the European and World Player of the Year gongs in 2007, along with a glut of other individual prizes in a year where he dominated games and headlines alike. But let's put this in perspective and bring in Bayern Munich at this point – as this is a Bundesliga blog. Kaka is one man, albeit a very talented one. Bayern spent a rumoured 70 million euros on PLAYERS (plural) during the close season at the end of the 2006/2007 campaign. In that splurge, the Bavarian giants signed one of the world's most exciting young midfield talents in Franck Ribery, a prolific international striker and World Cup Golden Boot winner in Miroslav Klose, and a sought-after Italian hit-man by the name of Luca Toni. Throw in the likes of Turkish international Hamit Altintop, Brazilian midfielder Ze Roberto, Germany stars of the future Marcell Jansen and Jan Schlaudraff, plus Argentinean midfielder Jose Ernesto Sosa and Bayern could be satisfied that good business had been done. However, after buying that lot, with the money Chelsea are rumoured to be ready to stump up for Kaka, you would still have change to pick up Real Madrid's Robinho for a tasty 25 million euros if you were feeling extravagant. Wave 99 million euros at the likes of VfL Bochum or FC Köln and their coaches would probably bin their current squads and buy new, and probably even better, ones. This is, as I pointed out at the start, just an ugly rumour at the moment. Ugly, because it suggests that the already cash-obsessed world of soccer could be ready to slip over the precipice of insanity on which it has been tottering for the last ten years. Ugly, because it suggests that if one club can harness that amount of money, few if any stand a chance of competing. Ugly, because if one player can cost the amount it took to turn a good but underperforming team into star-studded German champions then the gates to the world of soccer will soon resemble to many the gates of Hades. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. |
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