World’s second most expensive footballer could leave Barcelona for a song

Spanish papers are claiming today that Ronaldinho could buy himself out of his contract with Barcelona this summer for as little as 16 million Euros, or £12 million, which means that some lucky team could buy one of the planet’s finest players for significantly less than Darren Bent.

Ronaldinho’s lengthy and mysterious absence from the Barcelona first team suggests the gap between him and the younger Bent is narrowing alarmingly, although one recent guess in a Madrid paper claimed that the Barcelona directors had already had enough of him and his fondness for the night, and had made their minds up to get rid of him. To further develop the Bent theme, Spurs have been mentioned as a possible bidder.

The latest contributor to the debate as to the muddled state of ‘dinho’s head is his former manager at Paris Saint Germain Luis Fernandez, who wrote in his new book Luis Counterattacks that “When the team was away, he’d bring women up to his room. And then he’d go clubbing.”

His teammates apparently complained about this behaviour, but Ronaldinho ignored them. “If we’ve got rules and standards, but he takes girls up to his room in his spare time, what am I supposed to do? If I look the other way, the other players, who do as they’re told, would come to me and say ‘What will our wives say? These rules are pointless.’”

In an interview with Le Parisien, Fernandez also claimed “I’ve never had doubts about his ability, but I have about his behaviour. When you’re using up your energy elsewhere, you can’t give 100 per cent on the pitch.”

Has the troubled Brazilian been on the ladies again?