Real Madrid are planning a stunning £500million summer raid on the Premier League, Sportsmail can reveal.
The Spanish giants plan to sign three new galacticos and are ready to smash the transfer world record with a £200m deal for Chelsea’s Eden Hazard , as well as installing Mauricio Pochettino as manager.
Manchester United goalkeeper David de Gea (£100m) and Tottenham striker Harry Kane (£200m) make up Real’s triumvirate of player targets.
The Spanish giants are ready to table a world-record bid to entice Hazard to the Bernabeu
Real languish 19 points off La Liga leaders Barcelona but have not spent big for almost four years — despite taking second place in this week’s Deloitte Money League of world football’s top earners.
The Spanish club’s biggest concerns about their Premier League raid surround Kane who — with his clean-living image — perfectly fits the player profile president Florentino Perez insists on.
But there are genuine doubts in Madrid about whether the relationship Kane has with Tottenham, and the lure of playing in a new Spurs stadium next season, will put him out of reach.
Spurs have also made it clear that even a world-record bid will not persuade them to part with Kane, though securing his guide and mentor Pochettino could make the difference.
Real’s current manager Zinedine Zidane — who has been linked with Paris Saint-Germain amid doubts about his own future — wants Hazard. But this week the Belgian forward dismissed his father’s claim that he had rejected a Chelsea contract offer to see if Real will bid for him.
An urgent need for a goalkeeper has also arisen, now Athletic Bilbao have tied 23-year-old Kepa Arrizabalaga to a new deal with a £70m buy-out clause.
The club’s desire for De Gea is no secret. Real were so convinced they had signed him in the summer of 2015 that Rafa Benitez had told his closest advisors the goalkeeper was coming, before Perez’s staff bungled a deadline-day bid.
Real have lined up Chelsea goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois as their second choice in case United demand more than £100m for De Gea.
Perez’s return to the Premier League for players follows a four-year period in which Madrid have looked way off the pace set by Manchester United, Manchester City and PSG as Europe’s big spenders.
Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino is being lined up as the successor to Zinedine Zidane
The Deloitte report revealed Real have leapfrogged Barca into second place in the table of Europe’s top earners, pulling in £592.8m revenue in 2016-17, second only to United’s £594.3m.
It is the narrowest gap at the top of the Money League but behind Deloitte’s figures lies a more complicated financial story for Real.
Their income was boosted by winning the Champions League and La Liga last season, a double which helped the failure to make an eye-catching 2017 summer signing pass without comment.
Yet talk of a £263m Abu Dhabi naming-rights deal for the ageing Bernabeu has come to nothing and nor has a new kit deal to match United’s £75m-a-season Nike tie-up.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s contract demands are also a huge drain on a club who missed out last summer on Kylian Mbappe. The Frenchman went from Monaco to PSG on loan instead.
Benitez’s arrival as manager in 2015 coincided with more young players being blooded. He successfully introduced the Brazilian Casemiro, Marco Asensio and Nacho Fernandez, but there were no major signings and Real seem to be paying the price now.
Murmurings are growing louder about Zidane’s inability to change course tactically in the way City’s Pep Guardiola or United’s Jose Mourinho do.
Perez judges the success of a player on how much merchandise he shifts. During Benitez’s spell, he privately lamented the fact that £20m signing Mateo Kovacic made little commercial impact — saying it would have been better to sign him for £100m four years later to increase his marketability.
