THE QUESTION that everybody has been asking was finally answered last night when the Spanish savings bank Caja Madrid admitted it has agreed to give Real Madrid a €76 million loan to be secured on two unnamed sources of collateral. Madrid are also understood to have a similar deal in place with Banco Santander.
Real have spent in excess of €160 million to bring Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United and Kaka from Milan but the sporting director, Jorge Valdano, has admitted that the intention is to sign “four or five players more”.
Caja Madrid’s board of directors approved the loan on Monday. A source at the bank, the fourth-biggest in Spain, added that a similar deal had been approved by Santander, the bank that extended a credit line to the previous president, Ramon Calderon, as he tried to sign Ronaldo last summer. Santander itself has not commented.
Despite the announcement yesterday, however, Real are seeking to prevent the fees they are forced to pay from spiralling out of control and Caja Madrid refused to reveal what the money would be used for.
Calderon insisted that he had left the club with €91 million in its coffers. Added to the two loans, that would give Madrid a total of €243 million and Florentino Perez, the new president at Real, is also believed to have the backing of the Catalan savings bank La Caixa, which provided the formal €57million deposit-guarantee he needed to stand for the presidency.
According to one recent report, however, Madrid’s debt is an estimated €500 million and they are determined to raise money by offloading players this summer.
Perez has long insisted that he will sign as many as seven players, with the total planned budget for signings reaching almost €300 million of which they hope €100million will come from nine players who have been put up for sale, including Arjen Robben and Ruud van Nistelrooy. Other names include Gabriel Heinze, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Wesley Sneijder, Rafael van der Vaart, Royston Drenthe, Mahamadou Diarra and Javier Saviola.
“We are going to sign four or five players but that will depend on the departures,” Valdano said. “We’re working on it but people don’t leave Madrid easily.”
Perez has been clear in his insistence that players such as Ronaldo and Kaka can generate huge income for the club.
“There are players who generate a lot of money and others who are only protagonists in a sporting sense,” Valdano said. “Ronaldo could turn out to be cheap while others are extremely expensive.”
Valdano insists it is “difficult” for Real to sign the Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso and the Bayern Munich winger Franck Ribery.
“Liverpool do not want to sell Alonso and Bayern are after astronomical figures,” Valdano said. He also warned Valencia that Madrid would not pay €50 million for the striker David Villa.
He added: “If I was Valencia and Barcelona were offering €50 million plus Bojan [Krkic] and [Martin] Caceres I would sell, because we will not get to that figure – not even at a push.”
Guardian Service
