I wrote on Sunday of a report in Marca saying that despite City's interest in Real Madrid's Roberto Soldado, he was about to sign for Getafe.
A piece in Sport today tells a slightly different story. Apparently, Real Madrid are so desperate for the funds they need to sign Cristiano Ronaldo (which fits with this piece by Guillem Balague), that rather than sell to Getafe they are instead going to look for the highest bidder. The original Marca article put Madrid's asking price at €12million (£9.5million), which apparently Getafe can not quite match.
So as in to today's report, the new list of potential buyers is: "Benfica, Betis, Sampdoria, Manchester City, Olympiakos y Panathanaikos".
It's hard to know quite how seriously to take this. After the events of the last twelve months, and particularly since the start of the Ronaldinho pursuit, City are an easy name for foreign players and agents to drop into transfer rumours. Knowing that we're rich and ambitious, our name can seemingly be invoked by agents to demand higher prices/increased wages for players. So this might just be Soldado's agent trying to wring more money out of Getafe or Real Betis.
But, presuming our interest is genuine, is it well placed? It is possible that we'll need another striker, but it ought to be quite far down the list of priorities since the signing of Jo, and certainly before we ship out Bianchi, Samaras and Corradi.
And is Soldado what we need? I think he's always probably been a talented striker, but one who has yet to find a real home. A highly rated product of the Real Madrid academy (but so was Javier Portillo), he had a great record for Real Madrid Castilla: scoring 19 goals in the Segunda Division in 2005/06, only one behind the eventual top scorer. But never breaking into the first team, he was sent out on loan to Osasuna for 2006/07. He did pretty well: 11 in 21 in La Liga, 12 in 32 in all competitions. But back at Real last year, he failed to make an impact, only starting one league match (and one Champions League game) and is now looking for a new club.
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