This was supposedly to be the year that football tightened its belts and began to spend more responsibly, yet the clubs clearly weren’t listening. More money than ever was been spent this transfer window, close to £600million in fact, with plenty of WAGs on the move with their players too.
Emma Rhys Jones can finally set about spending some of Gareth Bale’s £300,000 a week wages at Real Madrid. The transfer saga dragged on all summer and bored us all to tears, not helped by Sky Sports News’ tedious coverage of the transfer, but he has finally become the world’s most expensive player. Apart from in Spain, that is, where Real claim the transfer fee is less than Ronaldo’s record of £80million in order to keep the Portuguese bighead happy – seriously.
While we are talking of Ronaldo, we should probably mention his girlfriend, Irina Shayk. Nice.
Mandy Capristo is also on the move. The 23-year-old is the girlfriend of Mezut Ozil, who finally persuaded Arsene Wenger to dust off his wallet and pay Real Madrid €50m (£42.4m) for his services. He is undoubtedly a great player, but is he enough to help Arsenal challenge for the title? Pundits on betfair suggest that they could have done with a player like Marouane Fellaini, who made a late move to Manchester United.
The Belgian cost United a mammoth £27.5million from Everton, £4million less than the release clause in his contract that expired four weeks ago. David Moyes clearly hoped to lowball his old club and promptly made a £28million joint-bid for Fellaini and Leighton Baines soon after that clause had expired. That was rejected and for £500k less he has ended up just buying Fellaini.
Hmmm, think Moyes needs a bit of practice on the negotiating front there.
He didn’t move to the Premier League; indeed, he has never played in England, but Kaka still deserves a mention. Not just because of his wife, Caroline Celico, but the extraordinary bit of business by AC Milan. The Italian side sold the Brazilian for nearly £60million to Real Madrid in 2009 but have now bought him back for nothing four years later.
I’m sure Spurs will be hoping they can do the same with Mr Bale.
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