Don’t think of this a soccer story so much as it’s a triumph of capitalism in the most pinko sport in the world. Spanish soccer juggernaut Real Madrid extended a €93 million bid (almost $131 million US, or 13.1 million bags of weed) to English team Manchester United for the services of Christiano Ronaldo (not pictured), considered the best player in the world by people that care about that sort of thing.

The remarkable bid comes just days after the Spanish giants signed Brazilian Kaka from AC Milan for a then-world record sum, maginally short of £57.5m [about $94m US]. Former United manager Tommy Doherty told Sky News the deal was good news for United, but a further indication “the game’s gone mad”. |Sky News|

After purchasing the rights of two of the most sought-after players in the world [a transfer is basically a trade for cash], some people are left wondering where Real Madrid will find the money.

Xavier Sala i Martin, Exectutive at Barcelona FC does not understand how Real Madrid and Florentino Perez, who have admitted to having huge debts recently, can suddenly gain access to the huge sums of cash they are now spending.

“I do not know where the €300 million that Florentino Perez thinks he has for signings actually comes from,” Sala i Martin told radio station, RAC1. “Florentino Perez says he will recover that money by selling shirts but, in order to do that, he will have to sell 30 million shirts. That is impossible.” |via News Bizarre|

I don’t know anything about soccer (that’s the game with the really skinny swords where they all wear white, isn’t it?) but $225 million is a lot of money to just buy the rights of two players. But hey, here we are on Thursday morning talking soccer. Which means we might be totally screwed for topics once the NBA and NHL playoffs are over.

|WAG img from Uncoached|