The fifty-six million pound man

Fifty-six million quid is a lot of money. I could buy a lot of Twirl bars with that. In fact, when you consider you get two fingers in a Twirl bar, well, that is a lot of twirl fingers indeed.

Real Madrid have turned the clock right back to the galactico era. Kaka' (I'm being pedantic about the apostrophe again) is now, in sterling terms, the most expensive player ever - note that Zidane cost more pounds but less euros (this fact is the easiest way to explain the economic crisis to a football fan!)

When the subject was brought up at work today, the sort of words used were "obscene", "disgraceful", "disgusting" and the like. And fair enough, you might say - the man is going to be earning 200 grand a week just for kicking a football. Considering the economic situation, that seems just a teeny bit off.

But I dare you to look at it from the other side. Football is business. And it is a very wealthy business indeed. And prices in the business world go up when demand is high for a product in short supply - just look at the cost of petrol.

Players of Kaka's quality, even players deserving of being mentioned in the same sentence, are thinner on the ground than pregnancies in a nunnery. And when you consider how little it took to transform Barcelona from last season's also-rans to this year's Dream Team was a new manager and two new defenders (Pique and Alves) then I guess Real Madrid are entitled to think that the outlay on the Brazilian will be a sound acquisition, both on the pitch in terms of titles and prizes, and off the pitch in terms of merchandise. Certainly David Beckham made Real a profit, and it's probable that Zidane did as well.

In fact, the main reason I'm horrified about the Kaka' move is not out of some moral outrage, but simply because, at the moment, I would say Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Xavi and Iniesta are all worth more cash than he is. While clearly a top drawer schemer, I just wonder whether, considering the decline of Serie A, he looks better than he is, a quick player in a league where the pace of the game is so much slower, where teams are willing to sit back in defence and give him time to play. Remember how ordinary he looked at the last World Cup?

It's just a thought.

L.