Graphic: football goes crazy

In Milan, the red and blue halves of the city spoke with one voice. Fedele Confalonieri, the president of Mediaset, the broadcasting giant owned by AC Milan president Silvio Berlusconi, congratulated his boss on the sale of Kaká to Real Madrid. “Certain offers you simply have to accept,” he said. The £56m Milan earned would “sort out their accounts”, he added.

Over at Internazionale, you could detect the sound of envy. Inter seemed keen to see some of this crazy money coming their way. “The doors are open for anybody, Barcelona or any other club,” said Ernesto Paolillo, general manager of Inter, an eager retailer pointing into his bazaar at Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Douglas Maicon, centre-forward and right-back of the Italian champions. “Nobody can be put outside the market for definite and we will assess any offers that come in.”

In Munich, the spiel sounded similar. “Under very special circumstances, we will talk about Franck Ribery,” said Bayern’s general manager Uli Hoeness. Bild-Zeitung understood the message. The German red-top had a mock-up yesterday of Hoeness at a lectern, auctioning a framed photograph of the French winger, Ribery, Bayern’s best player.

This is the domino effect of an unprecedented week in the football transfer market: a tawdry scrabbling around of executives all trying to find the spot and position themselves where the £136m so far spent by Real Madrid — who have committed £80m to signing Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United as well as Kaká from Milan — is going to re-emerge.

It has made of this transfer window a looking-glass world, in which instead of hearing executives spend June insisting superstar X or goalscorer Y is “not for sale at any price” — while anticipating that in July or August a big enough bid comes in — the noblemen of European football are turned suddenly into prospectors, galloping hurriedly to the Klondike.

The stampede has been made vivid by Madrid’s ostentatious bidding, but it takes at least two to make a market. Bayern and the Milan clubs look around and see not just Spanish euros but sheikhs at Manchester City and a Russian at Chelsea ready to join any auctions.

Players are excited, too, by word of Ronaldo’s status and Kaká’s £200,000-a-week salary. Inter’s Ibrahimovic set down his trail a few months ago, telling anybody who cared to listen how much he admired the football played in Spain. His representatives were in the two principal cities of Iberia earlier this month and progress has been made on the idea that Barcelona, the European champions, might recruit the big Swedish striker while letting Samuel Eto’o replace him at Inter.

Yet that possible exchange has some hitches. Eto’o’s value as a footballer to Barcelona is significant — he has been their best centre-forward of the past 15 years — but he has only a year on his contract left to run, which means he can leave them for free in 12 months. His wage demands to extend his contract, or to any club he might move to instead, are mighty.

Ibrahimovic’s advisors, meanwhile, want it known he is of interest to Madrid, too. He may be, but not with any urgency on their part. Inter want a market to develop around a footballer who is a good deal more admired in southern Europe than in the Premier League, so they will only find their auction in Spain or Italy.

In Serie A, where money is tighter, Milan will not spend the majority of their Kaká fee on one player, and Juventus have already brought and sold Ibrahimovic once in his career. But at Inter, he is not so loved by his head, Jose Mourinho, that the Special One does not see a big fee for Ibrahimovic funding a superior set of replacements.

Mourinho asked Eto’o to join him at Chelsea some years ago, so the admiration for the Cameroon international is already there. But in the transfer Klondike, there are also a number of good young strikers who a year before a World Cup are itchy to spread their reputations.