France striker Karim Benzema is joining Real Madrid from Olympique Lyon, the Ligue 1 club said on Wednesday on their website.

The 21-year-old Benzema will become Real’s third major signing under returning president Florentino Perez after Brazil’s Kaka and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.

When Perez was first in charge at the Bernabeu he set about signing one Galactico each close season. Now he is trying to buy them all in a month.

Where is he getting the money from during this global economic crisis? Furthermore, what damage is the spending spree doing to other clubs?

Manchester United were reportedly interested in Benzema to try to boost their forward line after Ronaldo’s departure.

We really are in unchartered territory here. Will Real still pursue Bayern Munich’s Franck Ribery too?

Last time the Galactico plan did not actually bring trophies. A few defenders might help this time.

PHOTO: Olympique Lyon’s Karim Benzema reacts after their loss to Girondins Bordeaux in the French Ligue 1 soccer match at the Chaban Delmas stadium in Bordeaux, southwestern France, April 19, 2009. REUTERS/Olivier Pon

Finally, Real Madrid can say that Cristiano Ronaldo is their player after the club reached agreement with the Portuguese over personal terms (which are presumably pretty generous).

The announcement is there on the Real website, with the news that Ronaldo will be presented at the Bernabeu on July 6. Expect an announcement with the razzmatazz to rival the Beckham presentation…

So Real have got their man, and Manchester United have their 80 million pounds. Will he, and Kaka, be enough to make Real Champions League players once again? And how should United spend that money? They’re going to need inspiration from somewhere…

PHOTO: Cristiano Ronaldo leaves Lisbon airport June 5, 2009. REUTERS/Hugo Correia

Cristiano Ronaldo's obsession with scoring an unforgettable goal in the Champions League final makes perfect sense now the world knows he always intended to leave Manchester United afterwards for Real Madrid.

Reaction in England to his departure was captured in a Guardian headline: "United fans will miss outrageous talent but not a charmless man". Ronaldo, it was said, possessed sumptuous talent coupled with obnoxious self-regard.

What, in the end, will Ronaldo be remembered for? His artistry as a footballer or his perceived failings as a man?

John Updike, who died this year aged 76, gives a clue.

A prodigiously prolific novelist, short story writer, playwright, literary critic, art critic and poet, Updike also produced one classic piece of sports writing entitled "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu". It is a wonderful account of Ted Williams's last game at Fenway Park in 1960, which turned out to be the great slugger's last game anywhere.

Updike cuts to the essence of all great athletes.

"He radiated, from afar, the hard blue glow of high purpose... For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill."

Baseball, says Updike, and by extension any sport, is maintained "...not by the occasional heroics that sportswriters feed upon but by players who always care; who care, that is to say, about themselves and their art."

Williams's craftsmanship and rigour appealed to Updike's puritan soul. His achievements, like Williams's, depending on unsparing daily endeavour.

There was, though, a contradiction between Williams the athlete and Williams the man. He was, the sportswriter Roger Kahn said bluntly, "not a man to match the deed but an egocentric emotionalist who seems most of all to need a spanking".

Updike did not avoid the controversies which dogged Williams's career. He just didn't think they mattered. Kahn cared no more than Updike about the personal foibles of Williams or of any other ballplayer. "They are all players in a drama larger than themselves," Kahn wrote. "There is a classic tragedy within major league
baseball that catches and manipulates the life of every athlete as surely as forces beyond the heaths manipulated Hardy's simple Wessex folk into creatures of imposing stature."

Art, not the artist, is what matters in the end. Lord Byron, as a recent biography by Edna O'Brien confirms, was a moral monster. Pablo Picasso, Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra were deeply flawed. Their poetry, pictures, films and music will endure, regardless.

So, too, will the memories of Ronaldo's mesmerising feats at Old Trafford when the narcissism and petulance we read so much about last week have been long forgotten.

In which Owen Wyatt and Kevin Fylan discuss the merits or otherwise of Cristiano Ronaldo’s impending move from Manchester United to Real Madrid.

Real have got the best player in the world, arguably, but have they got a bargain, or come to that a sustainable business model? And just who is the new Claude Makelele…?

We welcome comments below, and if you’re feeling more adventurous please feel free to leave your own video response. Upload it somewhere, send us a link and if we like it we’ll showcase it here.

One of the cruellest insults thrown at Florentino Perez during his first spell at Real Madrid was that the president had turned a great team into football’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters.

For Curly Neal and Meadowlark Lemon read Figo and Zidane. For Wilt Chamberlain and Marques Haynes we had Ronaldo and David Beckham to bring gasps from the crowd and bamboozle the  opposition.

First time around, it took Perez three years to assemble the All-Star cast that came to define his project, and another three for it to collapse under the combined weight of the salaries and egos, and those damned image rights we heard so much about.

In his second spell, Perez seems intent on proving that the only thing he did wrong at the start of the decade was move too slowly.

In the past few days he has pledged 162 million euros in transfer fees alone to sign Kaka from AC Milan and Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo.

If Marca and As are correct, David Villa will be the next to come, with Xabi Alonso, David Silva and Franck Ribery among the other targets.

The total outlay could be 300 million euros — plus the agents’ fees and the salary commitments for the next half-decade or so. Whether you feel that sort of spending is justifiable in the current climate, and there are plenty who will see it as plain wrong, this is not going to bring Real back to the position they once held as the neutral’s favourite.

The Bernabeu should certainly be an entertaining place to be next season, as Manuel Pellegrini tries to find a way of getting all the new signings playing together (and leaving any of them on the bench will not be an option).

But even if the coach finds the magic formula and Real win their 10th European Cup at their home ground come next May, they are unlikely to generate the sort of admiration and respect that Barcelona have inspired under Pep Guardiola this season.

Great teams are left to evolve over time and are often based around a nucleus of home grown players (think United’s European Cup winning team in 1999 or Guardiola’s Barcelona).

Some are brought together by a coach’s philosophy or force of personality and yes, it often takes a big-name signing to bring out the best in those around them.

Great teams come together in all sorts of ways but they are never designed with marketing in mind, and they are never just bought off the shelf.

GLOBETROTTERS: A member of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team nicknamed Airport hangs on to the hoop after he makes a dunk during an exhibition match in Budapest February 28, 2008 REUTERS/Karoly Arvai

RONALDO: Cristiano Ronaldo is seen celebrating Manchester United’s victory against Porto after their Champions League quarter-final, second leg match in Porto, in this April 15 2009 file photograph. REUTERS/Miguel Vidal

Manchester United said on Thursday they have received a world record 80 million pound ($131.2 million) bid for forward Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid.

“At Cristiano’s request - who has again expressed his desire to leave - and after discussion with the player’s representatives, United have agreed to give Real Madrid permission to talk to the player,” a statement on the United website said.

“Matters are expected to be concluded by 30 June. The club will not comment until further notice.”

So Florentino Perez isn’t just stopping at Kaka. It’s shaping up to be one of the most amazing transfer windows ever. Will he go for Franck Ribery too or will United want him as Ronaldo’s replacement?

It’s not a done deal yet, Ronaldo wanted to go last year and it didn’t happen, but this seems pretty definite. How much money has Perez got?

PHOTO: Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo is seen celebrating after scoring his second goal during their English Premier League match against Aston Villa in Manchester, April 5 2009 REUTERS/Phil Noble

The departure of Kaka from AC Milan to Real Madrid marks the end of the Italian era in European football. Not only can Italian clubs not attract the best players in the world to play in Serie A but now, when they unearth a talent like Kaka, they can’t stop them from leaving.

Italians used to describe their Serie A as ‘il campionato piu bello del mondo’ , the most beautiful championship in the world. It was not just because Italians love nothing more than talking themselves up — Serie A was the first league in the world to sign up top foreign stars, bringing in international talent at a time when the English league, for example, stretched no further than Scotland in search of players.

Beginning in the late 1950’s when the likes of Brazilian Jose Altafini (AC Milan) and Welshman John Charles (Juventus) were among the top performers, Serie A prided itself on being the league that had the money to bring in the best in the world.

After the 1966 World Cup, where Italy was humiliated by North Korea, foreigners were banned as part of an attempt to strengthen the domestic talent base and the national team, but when the rule was relaxed in 1980, the top clubs began importing talent again and before long Italy had become the first league to truly take on global status.

Frenchman Michel Platini at Juventus led the new wave and then the biggest name of all, Diego Maradona almost single-handedly led Napoli to titles in 1987 and 1990. The great Milan sides of Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello were built around foreign stars — the Dutch trio of Frank Rijkaard, Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten helped transform Serie A from a league dominated by cautious and defensive teams into a showcase for the world’s best talent.

Germany’s Lothar Matthaeus and Andreas Brehme helped Inter to the title in 1989, and by the nineties, any player in the world who could be considered a match-winner was being snapped up by an Italian team.

Just ten years ago, the top teams in Serie A included players such as Ronaldo at Inter, George Weah and a young Andriy Shevchenko at Milan, Gabriel Batistuta at Fiorentina, Hernan Crespo, Pavel Nedved and Juan Sebastian Veron (all at their peak) at Lazio and the best of his generation, Zinedine Zidane at Juventus. It was the departure of the latter to Real Madrid in 2001 that suggested Spain was beginning to replace Italy as the place where the world’s best could get paid best.

Since then though, England’s Premier League, flush with television cash, has begun gobbling up players that in the past would have headed to Serie A. In the 1990’s the likes of Fernando Torres, Michael Ballack, Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez and Didier Drogba would have almost certainly been Serie A players. Real and Barcelona in Spain and Bayern Munich in Germany have also proven stronger in the transfer market that Italy’s top teams. It would have once been unthinkable that Italian World Cup hero such as Luca Toni would choose to play in the Bundesliga rather than in Milan or Turin.

A week after Milan captain Paolo Maldini, who played with or against all those great talents from the late eighties onwards, finally hung up his boots, Kaka leaves Milan for a fee of around 68 million euros and Adriano Galliani, who runs Milan on behalf of tycoon and prime minister Silvio Berlusconi conceded the golden era of Serie A was now over: “Ten years ago Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo could have played in Italy but now no one even considers it,” he said.

That is the painful truth for Italian fans — it is not so much that Italian clubs cannot compete with Real’s occasional obscene bouts of cash-throwing that hurts but that Italian clubs are no longer even considered as likely destinations for the world’s best or most promising.

Berlusconi talked up Ronaldinho as the man who will now be the standard-bearer for Milan but the impression is that he moved to Italy after his best years, served with Barcelona, were over.

Money is the main reason for Italy’s relegation from Europe’s elite — Milan, Inter and Juventus no longer have the resources to compete with England and Spain’s top clubs. Italian clubs ignored marketing and merchandising as they presumed their wealthy owners — the Berlusconi, Moratti and Agnelli families — would take care of everything. Moratti still finds the cash but Milan and Juve now operate in the world of budgets rather than blockbuster transfer deals.

With the lack of foreign quality and top wages, Serie A has lost the sheen of glamour that once led fans from all over the world to tune in and watch. The days when Ronaldo and Zidane were face to face in an Inter-Juve match, with a supporting cast of quality Italians and exciting foreign players, is over. Does anyone watch Serie A on satellite or cable anymore?

The proof that this really is the end of an era is the way that the Italian media and fans have just shrugged their shoulders at the departure of Kaka. They know they cannot turn down offers of that size — offers their own teams used to make every summer.

KAKA: Kaka attends Brazilian training at Arruda stadium in Recife, northeastern Brazil, June 8, 2009. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes

ZIDANE: Zinedine Zidane shows his Juventus shirt at a news conference announcing his move to Turin, July 3, 1996. REUTERS/Claudio Papi

While Real Madrid were tying up their deal to sign Kaka from AC Milan, Barcelona seemed curiously ambivalent about the possibility of losing one of their big-name players, the  Cameroon striker Samuel Eto’o .

The 28-year-old has a contract until 2010 when he will be able to leave free of cost, unless an extension can be agreed or the club decide to cash in on him now.

The first meeting to discuss the issue between his agent Jose Maria Mesalles and Barca’s sports director Txiki Begiristain, took place on Monday with very little seemingly resolved.

“The technical staff and the representative have met to try and agree a period of continuity, which is what we would like,” Barca president Joan Laporta said on the club website.

Mesalles said no renewal proposal had been forthcoming so far, but insisted Eto’o wanted to continue.

He was quoted in Spanish media as saying: “We are open to every possibility. If we have to look at a renewal we will study it, but if there is another possibility we will study that too.”

Inter Milan and Manchester City have been linked with interest for Eto’o, while Barca are reported to have considered a swap deal involving Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and moves for Atletico Madrid’s Diego Forlan or Olympique Lyon’s Karim Benzema*, or maybe even Bayern Munich;s Luca Toni.

But why would they not want to hang on to a player who scored 30 goals in the Primera Liga last season and netted the opener in their Champions League final victory over Manchester United?

Media reports have suggested there are differences over the terms of a renewal, and that coach Pep Guardiola may want a different style of striker to lead the line along with Thierry Henry and Lionel Messi.

Perhaps Barca’s greatest fear is that if they cannot meet the player’s demands on an improved contract, or convince him to take up an offer from another club, he could just walk away from them next year denying them a substantial payday.

It is an issue that is unlikely to be resolved quickly, as Mesalles recognised: “The market is open until August 31 and anything can happen before then.”

PHOTO: Barcelona’s Samuel Etoo scores against Deportivo Coruna during their league match in Coruna May 30, 2009. REUTERS/Miguel Vidal

* corrected at 1730 GMT, June 10 after we originally had wrong first name

They took their time getting there but Kaka is now officially a Real Madrid player.

The Spanish club and AC Milan issued statements at 0030 local time with the player due to hold a news conference in Brazil, where he is on international duty.

No figures have been given for one of the biggest transfers ever in soccer but it has been announced the 27-year-old has signed a six-year deal.

Media reckon the deal is around 68 million euros which puts it second in the list behind Zinedine Zidane’s 2001 move from Juventus to Real.

It’s tough to say if he is really worth that much. It’s difficult to say if any human being is worth so much, especially in current economic climes.

I’ve watched Kaka a lot in the last two seasons and he has not been as good as he was in 2007 when he inspired Milan to their seventh European Cup.

Niggling injuries haven’t helped but a move may reignite his passion.

Will Florentino Perez now up his efforts to sign Cristiano Ronaldo and Franck Ribery? Can he really pull it off or will he have to wait and bring in one Galactico each year like before?

Where this leaves Milan is unclear. The money will come in handy but top players are not coming to Serie A anymore. Kaka’s departure may give Ronaldinho more space to rediscover his form but if that doesn’t work, new rookie coach Leonardo has an enormous hole to fill.

PHOTO: Brazil’s Kaka celebrates a goal against Uruguay during their World Cup 2010 qualifying win in Montevideo, June 6, 2009. REUTERS/Pablo La Rosa

AC Milan’s PR machine has ground to a halt in recent weeks but it may have to leap into action shortly to explain to fans why they have sold Kaka for a good deal less than they could have in January.

Reports say a world record deal, worth between 65 and 80 million euros, has been agreed with Real Madrid but Chelsea have not been counted out yet.

Milan have admitted money is tighter than it has been and it looks like they have decided to cash in on a player who is not quite as good as when he won world player of the year in 2007.

In January, Manchester City left Milan with their tails between their legs after failing to agree a 100 million euro plus transfer for the Brazilian playmaker.

Rossoneri fans were overjoyed when Kaka stayed but the club, who finished third in Serie A, have not gained anything by keeping him for just five extra months.

Instead they have lost maybe 40 million euros and will be selling him to a main European rival rather than City, where it could all have gone pearshaped for him and he might have ended up back at the San Siro on the cheap.

Carlo Ancelotti’s departure for Chelsea was messy. The Milan coach was constantly forced to deny something which everyone knew was going to happen.

It would have been much better for everyone if an announcement had been made a few months ago and Ancelotti would have enjoyed his final weeks at the San Siro rather than having to dodge questions until the end of the season.

Milan have not dealt with the Kaka saga well either.

A statement on Tuesday said chief executive Adriano Galliani was solely in Madrid to celebrate Florentino Perez’s election. He had earlier told reporters he was at the seaside in Italy when he really was in Spain.

Soon after Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi let the cat out of the bag by saying they would struggle to keep Kaka because he had been offered so much money.

Having lost Ancelotti, the retiring Paolo Maldini and now possibly Kaka, it’s been a very tough week for Milan, who have only brought in novice coach Leonardo and joked at his unveiling that it was because he was cheap.

If reports that Chelsea are close to Andrea Pirlo are true, the San Siro could have quite a few empty seats next season.

PHOTO: Kaka’s last Milan apearance? The Brazilian is challenged by Fiorentina’s Manuel Pasqual (R) during their Serie A match in Florence, May 31, 2009. REUTERS/Marco Bucco