It’s official. Tell your friends I said so. The footballing world has gone mad.

by Abhay Puri

Almost every Champions League and Premiership club seem to have forgotten that transfers cannot, in fact, be funded with Monopoly money. Moreover, it is quite clear that no financial director in club football reads newspapers, because apparently they do not remember that we are supposed to be in a recession either. Also, from the looks of all the rumours that are being circulated, many clubs have decided to fire their scouting staff and instead choose who they want to sign using a random name generator and a shot glass. No, really, that's what it looks like.

Let's start with that little Spanish club, Real Madrid. El Presidente Florentino Perez, appears to be, like all of us, an ardent fan of famous computer games like FIFA and Championship Manager. But unlike all of us, he actually has the finances and power to play real life fantasy football!

One cannot blame him for signing Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo, but for a combined fee of around £150 million?

£150 million is honestly, really more than the annual GDP of twelve countries. If Ronaldo and Kaka combined were a country, they would be have larger economies than Sao Tome and Principe, or the Falkland Islands. For that much money, Perez could have bought every player in the entire Spanish Second Division. Or an entire host of youth academies. Or a fleet of Airbuses for the club. Or a new stadium. Or, if he was really bored and wanted more realistic fantasy football, he could even have bought up Newcastle United.

However, Perez does not seem to have learnt from his mistakes. When he spent huge sums of money on Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham and Ronaldo (the old, bald, chubby one), Real won just two league titles and one Champions League in five seasons. But instead of spending his money on rebuilding a squad sensibly, he again splashes it all out on two players, and then attempts to sell the majority of his current squad in a plan to buy other Galacticos.

 Although Kaka and Ronaldo are two of the best footballers in the world, and in the long term will probably regain the incredulous amount of money spent on them, Madrid's problems lie in the fact that they have no strength on the wings and in defensive midfield, problems which will be even more difficult and expensive to address now that Perez has blown all his money and set a precedent of paying ridiculous amounts for good players.

Sadly, instead of pointing at Perez and laughing hysterically while tanning themselves in the powerful glow of treble trophies, the folks over at Barcelona have been bitten by the “spend-as-much-money-as-conceivably-possible” bug as well.

 If something isn't broken, no need to fix it, but instead of being happy with their almost perfect side and looking to perhaps to add a winger or extra depth to their squad, Barca have decided to join the bandwagon and nosedive into the market for every ridiculously expensive star in Europe.

First, they were said to be chasing Zlatan Ibrahimovic, then Franck Ribery, then Nemanja Vidic, and now David Villa. Funniest of all, of course, were links with Robinho, the guy who was once upon a time supposed to be the new “new Pele”, but really hasn't ended up being the new anybody.

Obviously, someone at the Nou Camp has been watching well-edited YouTube videos of Robinho from a couple of years ago and is now convinced he is as good as Samuel Eto’o. Who, by the way, is rumoured to be on his way out, despite the fact that he scored more La Liga goals last season than anybody except the Uruguayan guy with Goldilocks hair at Atletico.

When a team has Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta, Xavi, Eto'o, Thierry Henry and an amazing academy, why would they possibly want to waste money on buying more players? Why, why, why?

It must be transfer madness.