Finally, there might be an opening for Kaka to leave Real Madrid, as the Spanish giants have turned their interest to Stephan El Shaarawy and might use the expensive Brazilian bench player to convince AC Milan to go through with the deal.
Half a season with Mario Balotelli hasn’t been kind to El Shaarawy, who was forgotten all of a sudden as the star of the team, not to mention scoring only once after Balotelli arrived. Still, he enjoyed a remarkable season in 2012-2013, his breakout campaign, finally utilized as a first-team player for most of the time, scoring 16 league goals along the way.
With Carlo Ancelotti becoming the new manager of Real Madrid, and the previous Italian connections Zinedine Zidane has, it’s only natural Real Madrid will also look to the Italian market, which usually doesn’t send its best players outside of the Serie A.
The 20-year old is currently with the national team in Brazil, coming off the bench mostly but now that Balotelli is injured, might get a chance to play in the lineup against Spain. Milan would like to see an offer of €30 million for him, but Real Madrid might try to lower the price.
Kaka has hardly been a factor for Real Madrid during the Jose Mourinho era, with his downfall beginning the day he was sold by AC Milan to Real Madrid, and a good debut season was halted by a long injury that is seems Kaka hasn’t fully recovered from, at least mentally, to this day.
Ancelotti knows that at his current ability, Kaka is not good enough to contribute at Real Madrid, and will try and use his value to AC Milan as a way to lower the price for El Shaarawy. However, the Kaka deal between the teams was on the table last season and was cancelled, because the Brazilian wouldn’t give up on his €9 million per-season salary, while Real Madrid weren’t willing to help Milan a little bit by covering it.
A year ago, Real Madrid were also asking for around €20 million for the player, which wasn’t going to happen. About 12 months later, and they’re a lot more realistic no one is going to pay that much for Kaka, the third most expensive player of all-time.