City Slaps It On The Table

File this one under Holy Cow:

Manchester City have opened talks with Italian side AC Milan over the possible transfer of superstar playmaker Kaka.

A City delegation has been in Milan and reportedly made a bid in the region of 100m euros, with a weekly wage of £500,000 on offer for the Brazilian.

The magnitude of this move in footballing terms really can't be overstated. Imagine if the New York Yankees offered Albert Pujols a $50 million a year contract and you'll get close.

It's easy in this situations to dismiss this sort of story as just City trying to grab headlines -- much in the same way that Chelsea were rumored to have offered GBP70 million for Thierry Henry soon after Roman Abramovich took over the club.

But in the case of Kaka, it seems as if it's really happening:

Milan have said that the final decision on whether Kaka, the 2007 world player of the year, is to join Manchester City will be the player's alone, according to the Italian sports daily, Gazzetta dello Sport.

There's two ways to react to this news. One is to question whether Kaka is really what City need right now, given that the club are the second-highest scorers in the Premier League this season. They do have the sixth-worst defensive record, however, so perhaps they should have tried harder to beat Real Madrid to Lassana Diarra. Or, better yet, perhaps they really should have tried to pluck John Terry away from Chelsea. Either signing would probably have more important short-term impact on their fortunes.

But, realistically, that's just wishful thinking. For one thing Kaka is one of the best players in the world, along with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. For another, it's unlikely that City will stop at buying Kaka this January. And the scale of this transfer is just so large that there's really nothing a fan of any other English team can do other than, to use the old phrase, be afraid, very afraid.

--Smoods