Barca chief blasts Real’s transfer policy

BARCELONA finance director Xavier Sala i Martin is bewildered as to how Real Madrid are funding their summer spending spree. With a reported transfer budget of €300m at their disposal, Madrid president Florentino Perez has this week set about creating a second ‘galacticos’ era.

Sala i Martin, whose team finished nine points clear of Madrid at the Primera Division summit last month, is puzzled by how the massive Kaka and Ronaldo purchases are being financed.

He said: “I don’t know where the €300m that Florentino Perez expects to invest on signings are coming from. He says he will recover that money by selling shirts but, in order to do that, he will have to sell 30 million shirts. That is impossible.”

Sala i Martin is stunned Madrid are able to spend so much money in such a difficult economic climate.

He added: “I guess someone will have to give him that money and it would be good for him to explain where it will come from. How can it be that a football team is loaned so much money, considering the current financial crisis in the country and the policy of restricting credits that banks are currently following? I can assure you that we will not pay €65m for a player.

“For that amount we would buy the whole Barcelona team that won the Champions League in Rome.”

Top agent Barry Silkman agrees that all logic must go out of the window when considering the value of players such as Cristiano Ronaldo.

Silkman is adamant that Ronaldo, Kaka and Barcelona’s Lionel Messi stand alone at the summit of world football at present, and does not believe recent events will see the European market suffer hyper-inflation for the rest of the summer.

“If Cristiano Ronaldo goes it will have an impact only on Manchester United’s bank account,” he said. “It won’t have an impact on the transfer market, not at all – when you’re talking about players like Ronaldo, Kaka and Leo Messi, you’re talking about ones who aren’t normal and are in a different bracket.”

He added: “I was having a conversation the other day about George Best and if he was playing today, what value could you put on him? You wouldn’t know. You’d just listen for whatever was the biggest bid and decide if that’s enough to sell or not.

“For one of the top three players in the world, there is no value. It’s very unfair to class any players from around the world with players like Ronaldo.

“There is no figure to put on their head. It’s just what the buying club can afford, and what the selling club think is a good deal. You’ve almost just got to pluck a figure from out of the air. Those three (Ronaldo, Kaka and Messi) players are a class apart from every other player in the world.”

Silkman believes Madrid will be confident of making back their massive outlay, given the huge boost to their already high global profile.

“They’re not idiots. They’re not going to offer money they can’t afford,” he said. “A Premier League club will pay £15-16million for what I’d call a good Premier League player. These guys (like Ronaldo) are in a different league. They’re guys don’t just win games on their own, they excite the crowd, people from all over the world want to see them.

“If you said to someone they had to pay 100 quid to watch a player, who would you watch? You would watch a team which included Ronaldo, Messi or Kaka.”