Who is the Galactico signing that Real Madrid are about to bid €150m for? Five potential options | OneFootball

Real Madrid are gearing up to make a spectacular €150million for one of the world’s top players, according to the club’s president Florentino Perez.

“I’m going to make an offer to a Champions League club soon, on Tuesday, which will be the biggest payment Real Madrid would have made for a player in their history, €150million at least,” Perez told Spanish TV station Horizonte.

“It’s not [Jeremy] Doku and it’s not [Erling] Haaland, it’s not [Harry] Kane, it’s not [Michael] Olise…

“The €150m deal is not for a defender. It could be midfielder or forward. He is a young player. And he is not from the Premier League. He’s a total Galactic.”

We’ve taken a closer look at five players that he might have been talking about…

Michael Olise

We know that Perez explicitly stated that it’s not Olise, but according to The Telegraph he’s fibbing.

“Real Madrid will launch an audacious €150m (£129.8m) bid for Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise if Florentino Pérez is re-elected as club president,” states their chief football writer Jason Burt.

A cynical reading of this would be that this is all a lot of noise for a player that Bayern have no intention of letting go. It would be a convenient way of Perez showing ambition during the presidential elections without committing to a mammoth fee for a player that Madrid

“He can cast five eyes on Olise: he won’t get him. He remains unsellable,” the club’s honorary president Uli Hoeness recently told reporters after Jose Mourinho raised eyebrows by being in attendance at Bayern’s DFB Pokal victory over Stuttgart.

Vitinha

Besides Olise, if we are to take Perez at his word, by deploying a bit of critical thinking, we can read between the lines and work out who he might be talking about:

✔ Not a defender.

✔ Valued at over €100million.

✔ Not a Premier League footballer.

✔ A “total Galactic[o]”

That leaves us with a very small handful of names, and all roads lead to back-to-back Champions League winners PSG.

Vitinha isn’t especially young, but at 26 he’s approaching his very peak years. He’s also a compatriot of Jose Mourinho, and – most importantly – is exactly the kind of foot-on-the-ball tempo-setting midfielder they’ve desperately missed since the departures of Toni Kroos and Luka Modric.

Madrid need an answer to Pedri if they’re to go toe-to-toe with Barcelona once again. Going out and signing arguably the best midfielder in world football would be one way to do it.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia

If it’s not Vitinha, perhaps it’s one of his team-mates.

It’s not hard to envisage Kvaradona at The Bernabeu. He certainly fits the Galactico bill, as one of the best, most exciting forwards that consistently delivers on big European nights.

We haven’t really heard any whispers about him leaving Paris, and he’s only been there 18 months, but a monster €150million bid would certainly give the European champions something to think about.

Ousmane Dembele

Fabio Cannavaro. Michael Owen. Kaka. Ronaldo. Zinedine Zidane. Cristiano Ronaldo.

Winning the Ballon d’Or gives a player a level of prestige that makes them irresistible for a club famed for its showy star signings.

They couldn’t… could they?

Lamine Yamal

We know this one is completely ridiculous. It’s not going to happen. We’re including it as a million-to-one wildcard. But hear us out.

Perez made his reputation by poaching Luis Figo from Barcelona way back when. He’s on record admitting that it would’ve been a “dream” to sign Lionel Messi.

“In my first spell as president I probably would have [tried to sign Messi],” he once told Cadena Ser.

“If Messi had existed [as he does now] when I was first president, he’s exactly the type of player we would have signed.”

Just imagine how much he’d love to get one over Los Blancos’ great rivals by nabbing their biggest star.

Yamal’s ‘Thank God I’m Not Madridista’ shirt, unveiled during Barca’s title celebrations, has almost certainly extinguished any hope of this happening.

But you never know. Even if it’s purely as a power play, to flex their muscle and unsettle Yamal and Barcelona, it’s the kind of spectacular action that Florentino taken in the past.