Kun Agüero had a cunning plan. Drop the stink-bomb to his Atlético Madrid bosses that he wanted out; leg it to Argentina; wait for the offers to come rolling in â preferably from Real Madrid to save the hassle of moving house. There was only one problem with the plan: it was rubbish.
Currently, it appears there are no interested parties in KunâÂÂs purchase, perhaps because of AtléticoâÂÂs insistence on someone coughing up the strikerâÂÂs â¬45m buyout clause. Real Madrid now seem to be swinging in NeymarâÂÂs direction, with the mohawk-sporting madman a constant on the front covers of both Marca and AS.
Although the BrazilianâÂÂs transfer is moving at the speed of tectonic plates, Pele has carried on his personal tradition of telling the local press whatever they want to hear by reassuring Marca that Neymar is âÂÂready for the jump and I see him able to succeed at Madrid.âÂÂ
To be fair, it's entirely possible that Atlético have a whole stack of offers for Kun piled up on the fax machine â itâÂÂs just that thereâÂÂs no one around with the time to read them this week, due to some rather nasty behind-the-scenes battles.
A board meeting was held on Wednesday with the aim of fixing the institutional mess at the club which sees two people in charge, Enrique Cerezo and Miguel Angel Gil, concurrently and often completely contradictorily.
Unsurprisingly, considering Gil sits alongside two of his family members on the seven-person Atlético board, it was the Director General who won the tussle by being given the responsibility of running the club. Current president Cerezo was reduced to an institutional role, which wonâÂÂt lead to any conflict whatsoever in the season to come â despite the meeting being fairly heated, according to club shareholder Fernando GarcÃÂa Abasolo: âÂÂIt didnâÂÂt come to insults but there was a lot of tension.âÂÂ
Meanwhile the Barcelona press are getting more than a little desperate as there is much ado about nothing on the transfers of Alexis Sánchez and Cesc Fabregas. The move for the Arsenal player will probably end up going nowhere as usual, but the purchase of the Udinese front man looks like being a tricky one with Barça trying to offload reluctant-to-leave squad players like Jeffren in the opposite direction.
One club with no such failure issues in the transfer sack are Málaga, who have been busy Andalusian bees in the close season. They've brought in Ruud van Nistelrooy, Jérémy Toulalan, Joris Mathijsen, Nacho Monreal, Diego Buonanotte, Sergio Sánchez â and now JoaquÃÂn, who joins from Valencia.
Racing are still in a right old mess of their own making, with Ahsan Ali Syed now being referred to in the Australian press as another Bernie Madoff due to accusations of an alleged pyramid scheme Down Under. Marca reports that Ali Syed has failed to pay instalments due to RacingâÂÂs former owners after his purchase of the Santander club in January and still owes money to players after four broken promises.
There was news of more financial lunacy in a fine El PaÃÂs story revealing that new Sevilla manager Marcelino is owed â¬1.5m by city rivals Real Betis, despite having never even managed the club.
The situation arose when Marcelino was fired by Zaragoza in 2009 and was given his pay-off in promissory notes from Betis, who had bought Sergio GarcÃÂa from Zaragoza a year earlier. These notes bounced when cashed, leaving Marcelino as just one of the many creditors looking for their money back from Betis â the biggest being the taxman, who is owed â¬40m, just under half of BetisâÂÂs debt of â¬85m.
