Massive marquee signings an echo of profligate times past

In a few short years, social media has revolutionised coverage of football during the close season. We now see detailed coverage of football players’ summer holidays, as the players supply the holiday photographs papers used to have to pay paparazzi to acquire.

The traditionally football-free summer months are now enlivened with shots of players in Miami or Barbados or Sardinia. Andy Carroll dancing in a giant chipmunk suit in Vegas, Gareth Bale posing with Transformers in Orlando. Everybody looks so happy.

Maybe the problem is that footballers’ holidays have become too much fun, because now that it’s time to go back to work many of them have succumbed to the blues.

Luis Suarez’s advisers have not yet provided any bulletins detailing their client’s emotional state.

They don't need to: his doleful expression throughout the club's tour of Asia shows everyone how he feels about his current station in life. Wayne Rooney has missed Manchester United's tour, but sources close to him who recently reported he was "angry and confused" have given no indication of an improvement in his mood.

However, Rooney is in a better emotional place than Gareth Bale, whose chairman at Spurs, Daniel Levy, has reportedly turned down a world record €100 million bid from Real Madrid. Levy's stance is said to have left Bale "horrified" and "distraught".

Unspeakable sadness
News of Bale's consternation makes it sound as though agents are about to run out of words to describe the unspeakable sadness afflicting their players. They may soon be forced to trawl the literary canon for phrases of sufficient emotional power. "Christian Benteke's agent has told Sky Sports News that the player is frustrated at Aston Villa's refusal to consider offers from clubs in the Champions League. 'The club are being totally unreasonable. I'm afraid Christian wears the wry-faced pucker of the sour lemon moon'."

And "sources close to Yohan Cabaye say the midfielder is in shock at the collapse of his proposed move. 'Yohan's absolutely gutted. He's seen the mermaids singing, each to each. He does not think that they will sing to him'."

The language used in reports about Bale becomes more understandable when you imagine the feelings of a football agent who has just been informed by an intransigent chairman that he can forget about claiming commission on a €100 million transfer fee. Horrified and distraught is probably about right.

There must also be a measure of hope though, because if Madrid really are prepared to pay €100 million, the deal will surely happen; €100 million is 56 per cent of Tottenham’s turnover – the sum would cover their entire payroll for a year.

Bale is a magnificent footballer, easily the best to play for Spurs since Paul Gascoigne. But at some point Spurs will have to ask themselves: how much bigger than the club do we think this player really is?

Maybe Levy thinks he can squeeze an extra few million out of Madrid. He may be right. If they’re prepared to pay €100 million, then why not €110 million or more? The deal would be a world record in absolute terms, but when you consider how rich Real Madrid have become in recent years they could probably afford to pay more.

A transfer fee of €100 million is less than 20 per cent of Madrid's annual turnover. In 1996, Newcastle United bought Alan Shearer for £15 million, which was 37.5 per cent of their turnover of £40 million.

If the fee Madrid paid for Bale was in the same proportion to their current turnover, Spurs would bank more than €190 million.

Something tasteless
The likely outcome is that Levy will accept an offer from Madrid's president Florentino Perez. And the Spanish club's bankers will make the dream come true for Bale and his agent. Bale will therefore become one of the lucky 43.5 per cent of under-25s in Spain who have a job.

It feels as though there is something tasteless about the biggest club in Spain spending €100 million on a foreign football player at a time when Spain is full of brilliant young footballers and unemployed young people.

Admittedly, giant transfer fees have always drawn criticism.

The 1993 transfer of Gianluigi Lentini from Torino to Silvio Berlusconi's AC Milan for a world record fee of £13 million was condemned by the Vatican as "an offence against the dignity of work".

History shows that the practice of trying to distinguish yourself from the crowd with astonishing displays of mindless extravagance was not invented by football club presidents like Berlusconi and Perez.

About an hour’s drive south of Madrid, you can see the spire of Toledo Cathedral rising above the dusty plain of La Mancha.

Deep within the cathedral you can gaze upon its greatest treasure: the Great Monstrance of Arfe, a 10ft tower of gold, silver and jewels designed to house the ceremonial ostensorium where the consecrated Host would be displayed. It contains 18kg of gold, 180kg of silver and is studded with countless jewels.

The millions lavished by the Catholic Church on the creation of this unbelievable piece of ostentation did not do much to improve the lives of the local peasants, but we can guess that owning it made the archbishop walk a little taller.

The thing is the Gareth Bale of its day, and less has changed in the last 500 years than we like to think.