This time it's not Espanyol's Pablo Zabaleta but Zaragoza's goal machine Diego Milito, for as little as €8million.
Goal.com claims to quote Marca in saying that:
Negotiations between Blanquillos [Real Zaragoza] and the Blues "are at a very advanced stage."
Milito has yet to comment on any move, however his agent and lawyer, Adrian Faija has admitted that, "Manchester City are the only club to have placed a bid with my client's employers."
Since this popped up on goal.com it's found its way onto Setanta and SkySports' websites. I'm not quite sure how seriously we can take this yet, though. It's certainly not on Marca's website (have a look...), and googling 'Faija Milito City', and looking for Spanish language responses gets you nowhere. I'm not sure whether Spanish newspapers are as good as English ones at putting stories on their websites as soon as they have them - but even if they're not I'd like to think it would have made it onto the internet somehow. (One thing I found claimed that Faija is merely Milito's lawyer, and he has a seperate agent: Fernando Hidalgo. I don't know how important this is.)
But given that it's the first rumour in days, we might as well flirt with it.
It's not the first time we've been linked with Milito. Back in March, rumours started to circulate that Dr Thaksin had put aside a large sum of money for a 'player to fill the stadium'. When Eriksson was told of this, he started looking for a new centre forward. And Milito was one of his targets. Whether this makes this evening's rumour more or less believable, I'm not sure.
Anyway, Milito's career started at Racing Club in Argentina. He first emerged, aged twenty-one, in the 2000/01 season, scoring twice in eighteen matches. His first full season was 2001/02 when he scored 9 goals in 30 games and was first called up for Argentina. Milito firmly put himself on the radar in 2002/03 with 14 goals in 34 matches. It was halfway through the next year that he got his move to Europe. In January 2004, having already scored 8 in 17 for Racing, he signed for Genoa.
The twenty-four year old settled into life in Serie B instantly. In his first half season in Italy, he scored twelve in seventeen, as Genoa struggled to fifteenth in the league. The next year was the making of him: netting 21 goals as he led Genoa to the top of Serie B. Rule breaking, however, meant that Genoa started 2005/06 not in Serie A but Serie C1 - and Milito was sold to Real Zaragoza.
Milito's first season in La Liga was a triumph. He scored fifteen goals in thirty five league starts for Zaragoza, finishing fourth in the top scorers' chart, and finishing up on the losing side in the Copa del Rey final (losing to Pablo Zabaleta's Espanyol). Milito's zenith came in 2006/07. Twenty three La Liga goals (in 36 games) put him only two behind Ruud van Nistelrooy in the race for the pichichi, outscoring, inter alia, Ronaldinho, Kanouté, Villa and Torres. (See below for YouTube of all twenty five). Selected for the Argentina squad for 2007's Copa America, he managed only one start and one subsitute appearance, but did score in stoppage time in the 4-2 defeat of Colombia in the group stages.
2007/08 saw Milito score a respectable 15 from 33 games - way down the Pichichi standings but comfortably his club's second top scorer. It was not enough, however, to save Zaragoza from relegation. And so here we are.
His scoring record is obviously very good. He settled in swiftly moving from Argentina to Italy and then from Italy to Spain. One possible concern is the rumour that last summer Rafa Benitez thought very seriously about signing him but pulled out because he thought Milito was too slow. But I'm too excited about this rumour to let that bother me.
Milito's 25 goals from 2006/07:
And some of Milito's goals for Genoa:
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