Expect an announcement in the next ten days that Real Madrid have also picked up Valencia’s David Villa (best striker in Spain) for a tidy sum. Odds are they’ll make a move for Ribery provided they can find a buyer for odd-man-out Arjen Robben (COME BACK TO CHELSEA!) and they might take a swing at picking up a class central defender while they’re at it (Ferdinand/Mexes/Gallas/Terry). There’s no end to the madness at the Bernabu.

I equate this situation to a girl that’s been the ugliest of her friends for years, and has recently come into a wealth of cash courtesy of her intoxicated mother’s aloofness and unconcerned step-father. So she goes out and buys everything she ever wanted, and gets a makeover to boot. But does this all even out and produce the end result (winning the treble) or does it crash and burn in the end like these stories tend to. Let’s not forget that the previous iteration of the ‘galacticos’ era with Beckham, Zidane, Ronaldo, Raul, and Figo didn’t do as great as many seem to want to believe.

This team is different, though, and mixing Ronaldo, Villa, and Kaka with the likes of Sneidjer, Van der Vaart, Pepe, Metzelder, Sergio Ramos, Casillas, Raul, Robben, Drenthe, Cannavaro, Diarra, Huntellar, and Van Nistelrooy, make them dangerous any day of the week.