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Today's Mirror publishes transcripts of 2 telephone
conversations involving Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein,
which purport to go some way towards proving that Real
Madrid were involved in illegal transfer talks with
Nicolas Anelka and representatives before ever approaching
Arsenal. See here. The full transcripts can be found
here on the Sporting Life site.
In reality the tapes prove nothing, and only serve
to support what everyone already believes, that Real had broken the rules by agreeing to pay Nic and his chums a £6million retainer.
The first tape, from June 1st, is a conversation between Dein and The Real vice-president Juan Omieva. Omieva says that they were
approached by representatives of the player but agreed to nothing
because they only wanted to deal with Arsenal.
The second tape, from July 9th, is a conversation between Dein
and Italian agent Vincenzo Morabito, in which the latter claims
that Real had signed an agreement with Anelka's representatives.
While it's easy to believe Morabito's claims, without the
documents he says he saw they are in reality nothing more than claims, and it's hard to believe that the authorities would
bring charges against Real simply on the word of an agent.
ITV will play some of the material tonight on their aptly named "Tonight at 10:15 with Trevor Macdonald" (with "Arse-Licker General" Martin Bashir). That's after the live coverage of Man Utd
vs Marseilles (** seethe** ). It'll be interesting to
see if they have anything more concrete.
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