United sign £18m Carrick as Ruud joins Real Madrid
By Sam Wallace, Football Correspondent
Published: 28 July 2006
Their first strike in the summer transfer market has been a long
time coming but Manchester United have finally sealed the deal for
Michael Carrick - albeit it at a high price. The Tottenham
midfielder could cost them as much as £18m, while Real Madrid
claimed last night that they had completed the deal for United's
striker Ruud van Nistelrooy.
The Carrick transfer was concluded in the small hours of yesterday
morning and the 25-year-old was understood to be in Manchester
yesterday with the likelihood he will be announced as a United
player today. Around 6.30pm, Madrid announced on their website that
Van Nistelrooy had signed a three-year deal at the club, following
the acrimonious year-long breakdown in his relationship with
United's manager, Sir Alex Ferguson.
The announcement from Madrid came just one day after Ferguson had
mocked the Spanish club's "two bob" improvement in their offer,
although it is understood that Van Nistelrooy is set to leave for
around £11m. It is some irony that the fee for a player who scored
150 goals for United in five years will not be enough to cover the
cost of Carrick.
United last night stated that Van Nistelrooy had been given
permission to travel to Madrid for a medical, but that a a deal had
not been finalised.
While Ferguson had at last signed a player he has tracked for a
year there is no denying that Tottenham have secured a handsome
profit on a player who cost £2.75m from West Ham two years ago.
Tottenham have proved dogged negotiators, refusing to countenance
United's early offers of around £7m. United have tried to stress
throughout that they had other options - including the Lyon
midfielder Mahamadou Diarra - but Tottenham have not buckled in
their determination to get as near to their £20m valuation as
possible.
While it is not clear what conditions Carrick will have to fulfil
at United for Tottenham to receive payments up to £18m - they are
likely to be dependent on United's success in the Premiership and
Champions' League - he has certainly not come cheap. Sources at
Tottenham have indicated that, had United held out, they may have
been prepared to accept as little as £12m towards the end of
August.
Nevertheless, the deal should make Carrick United's fifth most
expensive signing behind Rio Ferdinand, Juan Sebastian Veron, Wayne
Rooney and Van Nistelrooy. The player had two years left on his
Tottenham deal and had rejected a new contract offer.
As revealed by The Independent last month, talks over Carrick
started before England's World Cup match against Paraguay and have
made for an unsettling summer for him. He was picked by Sven Goran
Eriksson in the first XI to play Ecuador - his debut competitive
international - and then dropped for the quarter-final defeat by
Portugal, knowing all the time his future was yet to be
decided.
There have been further reports linking United with the Argentina
defensive midfielder Javier Mascherano, of Corinthians, and
Ferguson's interest in him would suggest the United manager
believes Carrick alone will not suffice. For all his many qualities
as a passer of the ball, the midfielder is not a ball-winner - the
like of which United have missed since Roy Keane's departure in
November.
Mascherano and Diarra are the more obvious candidates for that
role, with interest in Deportivo La Coruña's Aldo Duscher used only
as stalking horse for Carrick. Any move for the World Cup-winning
Italy midfielder Gennaro Gattuso would seem unlikely now Milan have
been given the right to play in the Champions' League this
season.
While they have lost Carrick and missed out on Damien Duff,
Tottenham can still consider the summer's trading a success. They
secured Ivory Coast's talented midfielder Didier Zokora long before
the Carrick deal was concluded, have beaten Arsenal to the very
highly rated 22-year-old Benoît Assou-Ekotto from Lens and spent
£10.9m on Dimitar Berbatov.
Tottenham's failure to sign Duff came down primarily to the
player's wage demands and they were also equally unable, or
unwilling, to offer Carrick the £50,000-a-week salary he was hoping
to negotiate.
Van Nistelrooy's departure leaves United with just a month to
refine their transfer targets. The refusal of Fernando Torres to
countenance leaving Atletico Madrid means United may have to look
for an alternative, with Jermain Defoe among those
considered.
Ferguson has Rooney, Louis Saha and Alan Smith among his senior
strikers. At 33, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer can only be expected to have
a limited impact while Paul Scholes will be required in midfield,
so the 19-year-old Giuseppe Rossi may gain more first-team
chances.
There is also the small matter of another defensive midfielder.
Currently it would appear Carrick and Scholes are the favourites to
start for United in central midfield, a pairing that lacks a
genuine ball-winner.
United travel to Amsterdam next week to play Porto and Ajax. They
will expect to have Carrick in the squad.
* Van Nistelrooy's new Real team-mate, David Beckham, pulled up 30
minutes into his first pre-season training session with Real
yesterday, still troubled by his World Cup left knee injury.
Beckham faces two weeks on the sidelines.
Van Nistelrooy the flying Dutchman who became an Old Trafford
outcast
Ruud van Nistelrooy scored 150 goals for Manchester United after
joining in 2001 for a then British record fee of £19m.
Van Nistelrooy is Real's third signing under their new president,
Ramon Calderon, following the Italy defender Fabio Cannavaro and
the Brazil midfielder Emerson. He will link up with his former
Manchester United team-mate David Beckham.
The 30-year-old Dutchman put in a transfer request two weeks ago
having fallen out of favour at Old Trafford in the latter part of
last season as United's manager, Alex Ferguson, increasingly looked
to Louis Saha as a partner for Wayne Rooney in attack.
He was an unused substitute in United's 4-0 victory over Wigan in
the League Cup final in February and stormed out of Old Trafford
when left out of the team for their final League match of the
season, against Charlton in May.
Van Nistelrooy has scored 28 goals in 54 games for the Netherlands,
but he found the net just once at the recent World Cup finals in
Germany and was left on the bench by the Dutch coach, Marco van
Basten, during their second-round defeat against Portugal.
The Dutchman will face stiff competition from Raul, Robinho, Julio
Baptista, Antonio Cassano and Ronaldo for a place in the Real
attack, although his arrival is likely to hasten the departure of
at least one of those forwards. Real are in the process of trying
to put together a team under Capello as they strive to win their
first trophy in four seasons.
Van Nistelrooy started his career with the Dutch sides Den Bosch
and Heerenveen before joining PSV Eindhoven in 1998. While there,
he scored an impressive 62 goals from 67 appearances.
Ferguson attempted to bring Van Nistelrooy to United in April 2000,
but the striker failed a medical and then sustained a cruciate
ligament injury while training with PSV. Ferguson persisted,
though, and he finally arrived in 2001, repaying the faith shown in
him by scoring 36 goals in his debut season.
He was the Premiership's leading scorer with 25 goals when United
won the title in 2003 and was also named PFA Player of the
Year.
Van Nistelrooy is United's all-time top scorer in Europe, having
surpassed Denis Law's long-standing record in September 2004 and is
the fourth highest scorer in the European Cup, level on 47 goals
with Eusebio.
Hot deals: Top 10 moves
1 Andrei Shevchenko (Milan to Chelsea, £30m)
2 Michael Carrick (Tottenham to Man Utd, £18m)
3 Jon Obi Mikel (Lyn Oslo to Chelsea, £16m)
4 Ruud van Nistelrooy (Man Utd to Real Madrid, £11m)
5 Dimitar Berbatov (B Leverkusen to Tottenham, £10.9m)
6 Andrew Johnson (Crystal Palace to Everton, £8.6m)
7 Tomas Rosicky (B Dortmund to Arsenal, £8m)
8 Jermaine Pennant (Birmingham to Liverpool, £6.7m)
9 Craig Bellamy (Blackburn to Liverpool, £6m)
10 Emile Heskey (Birmingham to Wigan, £5.5m)
http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/premiership/article1201257.ece
