With winter darkness looming and a pityful defeat to Liverpool which offered the added insult of a goal from David Ngog, Manchester United fans needed something to lift their spirits. Their ray of sunshine arrived yesterday when the Fleet Street mob splashed their back pages with news of Fergies pursuit of David Villa and David Silva. A half-hearted attempt by United to sign the pair last summer didnt work out, but it seems Sir Alex has now been given the green light from Valencia to make a renewed bid for the pair, as the mediterranean club sinks desparately deeper into red numbers.The figure quoted in the papers was £50 million, and if Ferguson manages to sign both Villa and Silva for this fee, it will be tantamount to daylight robbery. Villa scores goals for fun and is as ruthless infront of goal as they come, whilst Silva is the footballing twin of Andres Iniesta....delightful touch, stunning vision and an eye for goal. Doubts linger as to whether they would struggle physically in English football, but as Zola, Fabregas and Joe Cole have proven, size doesnt always matter. Valencia have managed to stave off the vultures circling above the Mestalla until now, but it appears the time has come to cash in on their most prized assets.
The backdrop to this headline paints a sorry, yet all too familiar, picture of how clubs like Valencia, steeped in tradition and one of the few that could conceivably push the top two, are regularly forced to sell their best players. Real Madrid and Barcelona are the two financial powerhouses in Spanish football, regularly handpicking talent from the clubs below them, which only serves to widen the chasm between them and the rest.
The sheiks and Asian businessmen that have bloated the bank accounts (and overdrafts) of English clubs are yet to reach Spanish shores, and until the La Liga can attract the same sort of fervent interest from Asia and the Middle East as the Premier League, the situation is unlikely to change. Florentino Perez´s proposition of moving the kick-off times to 3pm could be a start, but it has been met with divided opinion among managers and presidents as well as the spanish public as, after all, this is the sacred siesta hour. Personally, I believe the national team is just as important to any sustained ´Battle of Asia´ against the Premiership, with their brand of total football more than capable of capturing the imagination of the Eastern empires. The World Cup in South Africa is the perfect shop window and could well spark a transformation in the make-up of La Liga, of the like we are now witnessing in England with Aston Villa, Man City and Spurs beginning to challenge the established order.
But until then, we will continue to see the Villas and Silvas of this world moving from, what are essentially, Spains feeder clubs to Madrid, Barca or the European big guns, and the spanish football equivalent to the poverty gap in Brazil will continue to grow.