Gareth Bale Transfer To Real Madrid On Verge Of Completion
Bale Transfer To Madrid To Be Announced Friday
The Huffington Post UK
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Tottenham Hotspur's Welsh midfielder Gareth Bale celebrates scoring the winning goal during the English Premier League football match between Tottenham Hotspur and Sunderland at White Hart Lane in north London on May 19, 2013. Tottenham won the match 1-0. AFP PHOTO / IAN KINGTON RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or ?live? services. Online in-match use limited to 45 images, no video emulation. No use in betting, games or s
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Gareth Bale's £93 million world record transfer to Real Madrid will be announced on Friday.
Tottenham technical director Franco Baldini was in Madrid on Thursday for talks with Real officials over the sale of the PFA Player of the Year.
Real, who have made no secret of their desire to sign Bale this summer, will set the world record transfer fee for a fifth time this century.
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Bale celebrates his last Spurs goal against Sunderland
Bale will follow Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Káka and current record holder Cristiano Ronaldo when he signs for the nine-time European champions.
A meeting between Spurs chairman Daniel Levy and his opposite number Florentino Pérez in Miami earlier this month ended without agreement and for a while it seemed a realistic possibility Bale could stay.
But while negotiations stalled, Tottenham took their spending up to £60m this summer with the arrival of Roberto Soldado from Valencia.
Real Madrid record transfers
Luís Figo (2000)(01 of08)
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A transfer that made you question what all the fuss was about when Sol Campbell moved from Tottenham to Arsenal seem tame, Figo joined Madrid from arch-nemesis Barcelona for £37.2 million in 2000...
(02 of08)
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And was met with some impressive levels of vitriol when he returned to the Camp Nou. To the left of the corner flag, beside the steward's foot, is the most famous pig's head in football.
Zinedine Zidane (2001)(03 of08)
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Madrid broke the world record a year later when Zinedine Zidane, then considered to be the best footballer on the planet, arrived from Juventus for £45.62m.
(04 of08)
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Like Figo, Zidane was a recent Fifa World Player of the Year and former Ballon d'Or winner, and his signing continued the era of the galácticos.
Káka (2009)(05 of08)
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Months after rejecting Manchester City - who finished in the bottom half of the 2008-09 Premier League table - Káka became the first galáctico of the second Florentino Pérez era.
(06 of08)
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The move hasn't gone as planned, and Káka was quickly trumped in the summer of 2009...
Cristiano Ronaldo (2009)(07 of08)
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When, after years of courting, Cristiano Ronaldo finally appeared in a Real Madrid kit. Aged 24, he became the world's first £80m player and the second Ballon d'Or winner to join Madrid that summer.
(08 of08)
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Consistently and scarily brilliant, Ronaldo is destined to be remembered as one of the most lethal attackers in football's history.
Levy has also sanctioned moves for Anzhi Makhachkala forward Willian, in London to finalise the transfer, and Roma playmaker Erik Lamela.
Bale has not travelled with Spurs for their Europa League qualifier against Dinamo Tbilisi due to a foot injury.