A delegation from Manchester City will fly to Milan this morning to try to secure an astonishing £103 million deal to sign Kaká. Mark Hughes, the City manager, warned that the club “cannot hang about” if they are serious about their intention to acquire the former World Player of the Year.

City held a first round of negotiations with AC Milan about the proposed world-record deal on Tuesday and were encouraged to return to Italy today for a second meeting. Garry Cook, the executive chairman, and Simon Pearce, a representative of Sheikh Mansour, City's wealthy owner, are scheduled to arrive in Milan this morning for a meeting at which they hope to persuade Kaká to join a club who are four points above the relegation zone in the Barclays Premier League.

Cook and Pearce expect to hold further negotiations with Adriano Galliani, the Milan vice-president, today, but also, more critically, they hope to hold face-to-face discussions with Bosco Leite, Kaká's father and principal adviser.

Doubts have been raised about whether Kaká truly wishes to join City, who have offered him a contract that is potentially worth a staggering £500,000 a week. But, having been surprised by Milan's indication that they would sell, the Brazil forward has authorised his father to listen to City's sales pitch. If Kaká chooses to stay in Milan in the short term, Real Madrid are likely to make a renewed bid for his services at the end of the season.

City, who are also close to completing the signings of Nigel de Jong, the Hamburg and Holland midfield player, and Craig Bellamy, the West Ham United and Wales striker, are aware of this and, while Galliani insists that nothing will be decided imminently, Hughes believes that the club will not have a better chance to sign one of the world's elite players.

“It may be that in future a deal to bring Kaká to Manchester City will not present itself again, so, when it does, you have to follow it through,” Hughes said yesterday. “You can't hang about and think we'll wait until the next transfer window.

“You have to react when it presents itself. Timescales go out of the window when you are trying to do deals for players. You have to react quickly when the opportunity comes to acquire a player of that standard.

“We look at Kaká and it works for us. It works for me, it works for the club from a business point of view and we will try and make it happen.”

By far the biggest threat to the planned coup is Kaká's state of mind. While Galliani and even Silvio Berlusconi, the Milan owner, appear to have reconciled themselves to selling him, Kaká is known to have reservations about the deal and will need to be persuaded that City can live up to their grandiose plan to become the biggest club on the planet.

He will have to be persuaded about future transfer plans and, if he is to sign, he is expected to request a get-out clause in his contract that would allow him to leave at the end of next season if City have not qualified for the Champions League in 2010-11.

Milan supporters protested against the sale of Kaká during their 1-0 victory over Fiorentina on Saturday evening, but Galliani suggested last night that the club were having their hand forced by economic reality. “We could not fail to think about this [deal] during the world crisis,” he said. “A club with a healthy balance has more certainties of going forward in time, [but] don't think that those who manage Milan do not have sentiments.”

Hughes, who will take his players away on a winter training camp today, has said that, with several complicated contractual and commercial issues to be addressed, he expects the deal to rumble on. He is more confident, however, that De Jong and Bellamy will join the club within days.

In Bellamy's absence yesterday, West Ham beat Fulham 3-1 at Upton Park, while a goal from Jermain Defoe, his first since returning to White Hart Lane, earned Tottenham Hotspur a point in a 1-1 draw against Portsmouth, his former club.