And if Real manage to pressure Santos into releasing the highly rated young forward Robinho, Raul would have to drop deep and add further to the competition for places.Gerrard may consult his close friend and former team-mate Michael Owen, but the England striker is unlikely to give an unequivocal recommendation of a move abroad.Although he has hardly put a foot wrong when on the pitch, Owen's future at the club is still unclear and Robinho's arrival could see him revert to the role of supersub once more. Real need to sell before they can buy and the recent sale of the Argentinian midfielder Santiago Solari to Internazionale will do little to boost their coffers. They are also unwilling to break their galactico salary limit of £4m and run the risk of sparking a new round of contract demands from players.On the playing side, Real have ample cover in central midfield. The build-up to him saying he wanted to leave Liverpool was eerily familiar to that which preceded the signings of Zidane, Ronaldo and Beckham.Both Real's coach, Wanderley Luxemburgo, and their director of football, Arrigo Sacchi, admireGerrard, while the president, Florentino Perez, is desperate to live up to his promise to add another galactico to the collection this summer.The sports dailies AS and Marca have been trying to do their bit by claiming for several months that Gerrard prefers Real and there had been a widespread feeling in Spain that the midfielder would be reluctant to join another club in the Premiership.Much too has been made of the SFX link. And at 25, and close to the peak of his powers, Gerrard fits the bill.For months Real have been using the Madrid sports papers to keep Gerrard's name in the headlines in the hope of luring him to the Bernabeu. But despite the wall-to-wall press coverage and the positive pointers to a move to the Bernabeu, for the first time in many years Real look unlikely to get their man.Firstly, the Spaniards have been taken aback by the size of Chelsea's opening offer and despite their assurances that their economic situation is healthier than it has been for years, they simply cannot compete with Roman Abramovich in a bidding war.
Gerrard is a client of the same sports agency that brought Beckham, Michael Owen and Jonathan Woodgate to the Bernabeu, and Real have good relations with the group. There is little doubt that Steven Gerrard has the sort of pedigree that gives him the right to be described as a galactico, but for once Real Madrid are lagging behind in the race to secure a world-class player's services. The nine-times European champions are struggling to match Chelsea's financial muscle as the English champions' opening £32m bid proves, while for Gerrard himself the shine may have been taken off a move to Madrid by their recent failure to win any worthwhile silverware. Gerrard's inspirational role in the remarkable victory over Milan in the final of the Champions' League has given him a global profile that allows him to be bracketed alongside the likes of Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane and David Beckham.After two barren seasons Real are keen to inject new blood into a tired and ageing squad. Poor old Jacques Chirac. He really must be terribly desperate to start making jokes like that. As overheard by a French reporter, he's supposed to have remarked to the premiers of Germany and Russia that British food was the second worst in Europe, outranked only by that of Finland, and that the only thing British agriculture had contributed to Europe was BSE.
Like many cherished national jokes, the French one about English food looks set to run on in perpetuity Perhaps M. Chirac's point was correct 40 years ago, when tinned fruit juice was a regular feature on the hors d'oeuvre list of the nation's restaurants, and even the now sainted Elizabeth David was capable of suggesting that a cook unable to source ricotta could substitute Primula. But frankly, it now bears as much relation to reality as the French belief that we all wear bowler hats, or ours that the French hang onions from the handlebars of their bicycles His remarks about English food are absurdly out of date. It would also strengthen the belief that, despite criticism, Didier Drogba would remain as Chelsea's main striker.. Mourinho is aware of how dependent he was on the latter two last season and with both susceptible to injury he does not want to go into the new season without options.