Maicon on his way to Real Madrid
Brazilian ace defender could be on his way to Real Madrid to join former boss Jose Mourinho as early as next week. The player could potentially be on the verge of completing a shock move from Inter to Real Madrid after his agent Antonio Caliendo flew to Spain to meet with the board of directors of Real Madrid. A deal for the player has been in the works between the two clubs for over a month now with ultimatums being issued by both the clubs.
Apparently, according to Maicon’s agent, a deal had previously been agreed in the past, but someone was deliberately trying to prevent the move from taking place. Antonio also said that someone had managed to clear his name from the record and couldn’t be identified. Most people assume that the person responsible for this was Inter’s new boss Rafael Benitez who has a reputation for playing the dirty card on a number of occasions in the past. He was reported to have said, "There will be important developments soon, even though someone is playing dirty," said Caliendo. "The chance of staying at Inter is concrete; after all he is well in Milan. The problem for Real Madrid is wages; they don't want to make a sacrifice."
Caliendo is scheduled to meet Real Madrid’s CEO, Jorge Valdano this week. He intends to negotiate a move on behalf of the player. Maicon is currently demanding wages estimated to be around seven million Euros per year. The Spanish club even though are more than abundant with money are considering this to be a ridiculous claim by the player. Their last signing Sami Khedira also demanded the same wages initially but later on dropped his wage demands in order to make it to make it to Madrid.
The two teams have not yet agreed on a fee or any of the terms regarding the transfer. However, it is expected that Inter would expect Real to start their bidding at around twenty eight million Euros. Before any official demands between the teams can take place, personal terms between Real Madrid and Maicon need to be decided. Caliendo hopes on wrapping up those personal terms before the end of the week, so that an official bidding war between the clubs can commence in the next couple of days.
Maicon has been a long term target of Jose Mourinho, who while managing Inter Milan at the time had referred to him as his main player/ star player. The day he joined Madrid, he made it very clear that he had every intention of making Maicon join the club as well. He is doing everything in his power to make the deal go through at the current moment. He has even gone as far as to ask Ramos to start looking for another club to play for since he claims that if Maicon does manage to make the shift to Madrid, then there will be no place on his squad for the Spanish World Cup winner.
Maicon would be a great addition to the squad, whose only current weakness is their defence. If Mourinho decides to keep Ramos, he could switch him to the left back position and keep Maicon on the right. What that would do is help Madrid have strong stability down both flanks. Also it would mean that they wouldn’t have to rely on Arbeloa who has been terrible as a left back all season long and with Ashley Cole more than certainly not coming to Madrid, it is what experts believe to be Madrid and Mourinho’s best option.
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