More changes at the Bernabeu

(Note: I had orig­i­nally writ­ten that Emer­son had moved to Inter Milan, thanks to Mr. Bobby McMa­hon of Fox Soc­cer Chan­nel for point­ing out my mis­take. Emer­son had been rumoured to be mov­ing to Inter but ended up with rivals AC instead. My apolo­gies for the mis­take.)

Not con­tent with the sign­ings they’ve already made, Real Madrid have splashed out on two more big-name sign­ings, while ship­ping two play­ers off to Serie A clubs. Madrid reached an agree­ment for the trans­fer of Cicero Joao de Cezare (referred to as “Cicinho”) to AS Roma and have moved Emer­son to defend­ing Cham­pi­ons League win­ners AC Milan. Emer­son joined Real Madrid from Juven­tus for an esti­mated fee of 16 mil­lion euros (approx. $21.56 mil­lion US) just last sum­mer and it has not been reported how much of that fee they have recouped. Cicinho joins Roma for a reported fee of up to 11 mil­lion euros. Michel Sal­gado and Ser­gio Ramos have been used on the right dur­ing most of Real’s pre-season to date, and Cicinho asked for a move to another club in order to get a chance at first-team football.

Emerson’s sign­ing was made by for­mer coach Fabio Capello who had worked with the hold­ing mid­fielder dur­ing his time at both AS Roma and Juven­tus. How­ever, the noto­ri­ously hard-to-please Real Madrid fans quickly got on the player’s back after a shaky start to the sea­son and he strug­gled to set­tle at the Span­ish giants. He was also viewed as part of the rea­son that Madrid did not play the eye-catching foot­ball that is expected of the club. Emer­son is by no stretch of the imag­i­na­tion a “flair” player.

Adding to the flair quo­tient of the Madrid side will be Arjen Robben. Chelsea and Madrid finally agreed a fee for the Hol­land winger which is thought to be close to 30 mil­lion euros. Robben was tar­geted as a sign­ing by Madrid pres­i­dent Ramon Calderon dur­ing his elec­tion cam­paign last sum­mer and spec­u­la­tion height­ened when Chelsea’s attempts to per­suade Robben to sign a new long-term deal col­lapsed dur­ing the sum­mer break. Madrid winced at the prospect of meet­ing Chelsea’s ask­ing price but pre-season set­backs (includ­ing being beaten 5–3 by Sevilla en route to a 6–3 aggre­gate defeat in the Span­ish Super Cup) increased the pres­sure on Calderon to make fur­ther changes at the club.

The other player to join, much to Liverpool’s dis­may, is Man­ches­ter United defender Gabriel Heinze. Henize had wanted a move away from Old Traf­ford as he was no longer first-choice at left-back and had proven inef­fec­tive as a centre-back with the Red Dev­ils. The fee for Heinze was at least 10 mil­lions Euros, the amount of the infa­mous escape clause in Heinze’s con­tract, which Liv­er­pool were will­ing to pay. United, rightly so, were unwill­ing to sell to a league rival and refused to approve the deal. Heinze gives Real an expe­ri­enced left-back and he is likely to start ahead of Marcelo Veira. The pur­chases of Robben and Heinze take Madrid’s spend­ing in the off­sea­son to around 120 mil­lion euros (US$162 mil­lion), though that does not include money recouped on the sales of other players.