Saturday 12 July 2008

Ronaldinho latest

Reports in the continental press this morning only further confuse as to the future of Ronaldinho.

Gazzetta dello Sport runs with a big piece claiming that last night Ronaldinho and his agent agreed to a two year deal with AC Milan, paid €6.5million/year (£5.2million/year or £100,000/week).

The issue now is for Milan to agree a fee for the player with Barcelona. According to Gazzetta, Barca have dropped their asking price from €35m (£28m) to €25m (£20m) in hope of forcing through a deal. Thus far Milan have only offered €15m (£12m), but Vice President Adriano Galliani is set to to travel to Barcelona to seal the deal, hoping to exploit the current weakness of Barcelona President Joan Laporta.

Catalan daily Sport has a different angle on recent developments. They claim this morning that so far City are the only club to have made a firm offer, which they put at €32m (£25.6m) - which fits with the prices quoted in the Gazzetta piece. Our situation is therefore the opposite of Milan's: reached an agreement with the club, but still nowhere near finalising anything with the player. Sport describes Ronaldinho's chances of agreeing anything with City as 'not too easy'. City have offered the player €250,000/week (£200,000/week - like Galliani said - double what Milan offered).

The article concludes in what Yahoo Babel Fish seems to suggest is a rather preachy tone. I won't quote it, because the translator results are rather unreadable, and adapting them into English may remove it too far from the original meaning. But the point seemed to be that Ronaldinho is definitely going to leave Barcelona, and it's time for him to start thinking seriously about City. And if Milan are genuinely interested, it's time for them to put an offer on the table which can match City's.

The saga continues.

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