We are on the brink of ruin,' said the president of Real Madrid Florentino Perez in April 2021 when he appeared on Spanish television to announce a new European Super League. 'By 2024 we will be dead.'
Well, here we are in 2024 and it turns out Real Madrid are not dead. In Monty Python-speak, they are not even resting.
On the contrary, they have just agreed a five-year deal with the world's most expensive player.
When Kylian Mbappe is finally presented it will probably be against a backdrop of the famous picture of him as a 14-year-old with posters on his wall of Cristiano Ronaldo playing for Madrid.
The talk will be of boyhood dreams, but if Madrid had been the sentimental option Mbappe wouldn't have stayed for seven years at Paris Saint-Germain.
He is going there in large part because, according to Deloitte's most recent money list, Real Madrid are the highest revenue-generating club in the world.
Mbappe, 25, will arrive on a basic annual salary of €15million (£12.8m) after tax, rising to €20m (£17.1m) across his five-year contract. That equates to an initial wage of €30m (£25.6m) gross, rising to €40m (£34.2m) with Madrid paying 50 per cent of that figure as tax.
His signing-on fee will surpass the €100m (£85.4m) mark — not a problem for a club whose latest La Liga-imposed salary cap was calculated at £620m, £340m higher than any other club in Spain.
Madrid won't just fill the recently renovated Santiago Bernabeu for Mbappe's games, they will fill it for his presentation too.
They want that event — due to take place before the Euros if PSG, who have him under contract until the end of June, allow it — to be the biggest of its kind, one of many planned for a stadium the club believe they can turn into Europe's Madison Square
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