With seven wins and two draws, the Valencia-based side are one point ahead of Real Madrid - having inflicted a 1-0 defeat on Jose Mourinho's men at home last month - and another point clear of third-placed Barca.

Shock and surprise are just two of the words that have been regularly used in the last week at this unprecedented state of affairs, with Levante topping La Liga for the first time in their 102-year history.

How did they get there? Where have they come from? And can they stay there?

Not a galactico in sight, but Levante have lit up La Liga this season. Photo: Getty

Levante have built their success on an unlikely combination of factors.

Firstly, few people expected the new coach Juan Ignacio Martinez to be a miracle worker.

The 47-year-old, described in one pre-season guide as a "globe trotter around the Mediterranean", with a CV that mainly included lower league clubs on the coast, had never before coached in the Spanish first division.

However, he has managed to create a never-say-die team spirit within his motley collection of journeymen professionals.

Arguably the biggest name in his squad is the 33-year-old former Inter Milan midfielder Francisco Farinos, who earned a couple of Spanish caps over a decade ago.

"What this team has achieved seems impossible. At the start of the season all that I was looking for was to avoid relegation" said Martinez on Monday, seemingly unable to comprehend his team's place at the top of the league.

"It's very easy to look at the table when you are first," added the Levante captain Sergio Ballesteros, who admitted that there had been times in previous seasons when he couldn't bring himself to open a newspaper on Monday mornings.

Never before in Levante's chequered league history, whether the club has been in the first or fourth tier of Spanish football, had they strung together six consecutive wins, let alone the seventh they notched up against Real Sociedad on Wednesday.

That 3-2 victory also made Martinez only the second La Liga novice coach to put together such a winning streak.

In addition to Martinez's influence, nearly every player has also been performing far beyond his expected ability.

Uruguay goalkeeper Gustavo Munua has been in outstanding form, at least until they faced Real Sociedad, when things didn't go quite so well and it required a Ruben goal three minutes into injury time to maintain their pole position.

Up front, Valdo, Arouna Kone and Juanlu have combined to form a great strike threat, as Real Madrid found out.

Ivory Coast international Kone, the scorer against Real, has been revitalised since joining Levante on loan, as part of a house-clearing exercise by Sevilla during the summer.

Sevilla club president Jose Maria del Nido hailed Kone as "one of the best strikers in the world" when he arrived from PSV Eindhoven in 2007 for 12m euros.

But he never settled, his form fell apart, his confidence tumbled and he was also bedevilled by injuries.

In four years at Sevilla, he scored just one league goal. At Levante, he has already found the net three times in nine games.

In addition his goals, Kone has also been creating opportunities every game for his colleagues to capitalise on.

Manager Juan Ignacio Martinez has fostered a never-say-die team spirit. Photo: Getty

Levante's current situation is all the more remarkable as they were on the brink of bankruptcy barely three years.

Astonishing mismanagement saw the club owing around 18m euros to creditors, and players went through almost all of the 2007-08 season without being paid. The financial crisis at the club was one of the main incidents behind the La Liga players' strike at the start of this season.

After substantial help from local councils - their shirts bear the words "Comunitat Valenciana" with the regional government as a sponsor - and many debts being written off, the club is still run on a shoestring.

Total signings this summer came to less than 300,000 euros. Levante's total wage bill is around 5m euros, less than half of the individual salaries of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

After two seasons in the second division, Levante finished 14th on their return to the top flight, which most people considered a major feat. At the start of the season, they were many peoples' tip for relegation.

To be fair, not a single well-known pundit has put his or her neck on the line and said that they expect Levante still to be on top in May. They have yet to face any of the four clubs behind them - Real Madrid, Barcelona, local rivals Valencia and Sevilla - away from home and they have only played host to Real so far.

Nevertheless, their appearance at the top of the table has captured the imagination of the public and the media.

"A wind has blown through La Liga and it's called Levante," said the daily sports newspaper Marca on Monday.

It remains to be seen whether this is a wind that will blow itself out shortly but for the moment it has certainly provided a welcome breath of fresh air.

Finally, there will be football in La Liga this weekend after the players’ union and the top two division’s clubs worked out some of their differences and the strike was called off.

Now, we can concentrate on what’s happening on the pitch rather than behind-the-scenes but once again it looks like being a two-horse race in Spain between current champions Barcelona and their eternal rivals Real Madrid.

Long gone are the days when the likes of Valencia, Atletico Madrid and Deportivo La Coruna, the only other teams apart from the two Spanish giants to triumph in the last 20 years, could contemplate upsetting the status quo.

The only time in the last seven years when anybody has eased themselves between Barca and Real was when Villarreal finished second in 2007-08.

Barcelona's Lionel Messi tricks his way past the Real Madrid defence during the Spanish Cup final. PHOTO GETTY

“Barcelona and Madrid, face to face again without any third contender,” was the headline of an editorial in the Spanish sports daily Marca just over a week ago, when the league was originally expected to get underway.

I think that says it all.

Nearly every other club, not least the six (Mallorca, Zaragoza, Racing Santander, Rayo Vallecano, Real Betis and Granada) that are in administration to protect them from their creditors which in some cases includes their own players, are worried about where their next euro is coming from.

At least, clubs in administration don’t have to be worried about points being deducted, unlike in England. There are so many of them that the LFP - the organisation of professional football clubs in Spain’s top two divisions - has tacitly acknowledged that such sanctions would make a mockery of the league.

By contrast, despite being mindful of the new UEFA edicts of financial prudency, both the Big Two have the finances to have been able to delve into the transfer market in the last couple of months.

Barca go in search of their fourth consecutive title since Pep Guardiola took over in the summer of 2008.

"The fourth season is different from the first, the motivations are different. It's a little calmer, but I still have the same enthusiasm and desire to play football well,” said Guardiola recently, despite continued speculation about whether he will still be in the same job this time next year as he only has a contract to the end of the season.

Four-in-a-row would be a truly meaningful achievement for Guardiola to put alongside all his other triumphs including two Champions League wins. The only other time Barca have put together such a streak was from 1991 to 1994, when they had the Dutch legend Johan Cruyff at the helm.

You might think otherwise if you were addicted to the soap opera surrounding Cesc Fabregas’ move from Arsenal, but this has been a quiet summer in the Camp Nou offices.

Not one of what would be considered Guardiola’s first-choice 11 has left while, in addition to Cesc, Barca has also acquired the highly rated Chilean striker Alexis Sanchez. The emergence of Thiago Alcantara, a product of Barca’s La Masia youth development centre, has also added to the depth of their squad.

There have been more comings and goings at the Santiago Bernabeu.

Jose Mourinho has brought in five new players, including the left-sided Portuguese international Coentrao from Benfica, and the Turkish internationals Nuri Sahin and Hamit Altintop.

“This is genuinely a team that could end the dictatorship of Barca,” added Marca and Guardiola has acknowledged on several occasions that Real should be an even more formidable opponent that last season.

Last week’s two Supercopa matches between the pair suggest that the newspaper and Guardiola could both be right and - forgetting Mourinho’s antics and the free-for-all at the end of the second leg - also proved that even if La Liga is only about two teams, it still shouldn’t be too boring.

The joker in the pack among those chasing Barca and Real in La Liga this season could be Malaga, whose best finish in the last 25 years was eighth and who were declared bankrupt themselves and in Spanish football’s fourth tier less than 20 years ago.

Qatari sheikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Al-Thani took over the club when they were at the very foot of the first division midway through the season and brought in former Real Madrid boss Manuel Pellegrini, who then guided them to mid-table respectability.

Using Manchester City as a blueprint for success, this summer Al-Thani has dug into his deep pockets and spent more than €60 million on nine classy reinforcements including former Real Madrid star Ruud van Nistelrooy, French international midfielder Jeremy Toulalan as well as Spanish internationals Santi Cazorla and Ignacio Monreal.

There might be a short period of adaption but it’s expected that the quality of players will mean that they could challenge the usual suspects Valencia, Villarreal, Sevilla and Atletico - who have all lost key players from last season in a bid to keep their books relatively straight - as well as a revived Athletic Bilbao for a Champions League place or a spot in next season’s Europa League.

At the other end of the table, just like in England and Italy, the promoted teams from Segunda often find life difficult. This year, it’s unlikely to be any different for Real Betis, Rayo Vallecano and Granada, with the latter back in the top flight for the first time in 35 years.

All three are also beset with financial problems and haven’t been able to bring in any meaningful reinforcements.

Another club who look as though they are set for a miserable season is Real Zaragoza.
Zaragoza also had to enter administration to stop them being declared bankrupt and have only been able to sure up their side with a scattering of players scavenged from reserve teams and returning loan players.

The respected former Mexico coach Javier Aguirre will have his hands full keeping the two-time European competition winners in the Spanish first division and the days when Zaragoza were almost on level terms with Barcelona and Real Madrid must now see like a hazy hallucination for their fans.

It now seems pertinent to ask: what happens once he's signed on the dotted line for last season's winners of La Liga and the Champions League?

Going from being Arsenal captain to sitting on the Barca bench seems the most likely answer.

Despite his eagerness to secure his exit from the Emirates Stadium ever since Spain lifted the World Cup last summer, with the image of him donning a Barca shirt in the victory parade having haunted him for the last 12 months, most pundits in Spain believe that his price tag of around 40 million euros (£35m) will still not make him an automatic first choice at the Nou Camp.

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Barca obviously didn't do too badly without Fabregas last season and, so far, they haven't let go of any of the main components of their successes.

It's difficult, nay almost impossible, to see Cesc being put immediately ahead in the pecking order of anyone from the quartet of Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets or Lionel Messi.

The only thing that would get him on the pitch from the start appears to be if one of them is injured or if Barca coach Pep Guardiola decides to rotate his squad to give someone a breather, which he rarely did last season.

The opportunities for Fabregas to feature in the Barca starting line-up also seem to become much more limited since the emergence over the summer of Thiago Alcantara, the undisputed star of Spain's European Under-21 triumph in June who also made an impressive debut for the Spanish senior side in Wednesday's 2-1 friendly loss to Italy.

Thiago, the 21-year-old son of Brazil's 1994 World Cup winner Mazinho, has almost the same attributes and talents as Fabregas and will be competing directly with him for playing time.

Like Fabregas, he is a product of the Barca youth team, having arrived at the age of 14, and is versatile player in the midfield and down both wings.

It seems certain that Fabregas will have to settle for being an impact player coming off the bench, which has been his prevailing image in Spain in the last 12 months since he was so effective in that role during the World Cup.

He only featured in four matches in South Africa, coming on in the second half in every case, and for a grand total of 126 minutes.

However, possibly the most telling statistic of the significance of his contribution was that he notched up 124 passes that found their man, the most important of which went to the feet of his soon-to-be new team mate Iniesta, who got the only goal of the final.

The key thing that appears to have kept Fabregas interested in coming back to Barca, after being born close to the city in the dormitory town of Vilassar de Mar just over 24 years ago, is the constant reassurance by Guardiola that he really does have a role at the club - despite widespread scepticism by football commentators across the nation.

The Barcelona-based daily newspaper Sport said on Wednesday that Guardiola has been in constant contact with Fabregas over the summer so that he doesn't get his head turned by any other offers.

Manchester City, Chelsea, Milan and Real Madrid have all apparently shown an interest in the unsettled playmaker while Barca were trying to finalise an agreement.

"In recent weeks, Guardiola and Cesc have spoken three times and the theme of the conversation has always been similar: the coach has promised that the club is doing everything possible to sign him and explained that he has definite plans about the manner in which he'll be incorporated in the team," revealed Sport.

If that is true, then Fabregas seems to have accepted not only a reduced pay packet - although Barca are likely to have indicated that he will be involved in various promotional schemes to ensure that his bank balance doesn't ultimately suffer - but a reduced footballing role.

One theory doing the rounds in the Spanish media, neither confirmed nor denied by anyone at the club, is that Cesc is actually a long-term replacement for the iconic Xavi who, at the age of 31, may now be looking at less time on the pitch himself in the coming season in order to preserve his battered legs.

Regardless of what he does with a football in the coming months, at least the acquisition of Cesc will provide Barca with a morale-boosting piece of one-upmanship over their perennial rivals Real Madrid, which might be worth the 40m euros alone.

The July 7, 2007 edition of daily sports newspaper Marca had the words "Madrid are offering between 35 and 40 million (euros) for the Catalan" on its front page, and every month or so since then, there have been suggestions that Real were seriously in the market for one of the best-known products of Barca's La Masia football factory.

"Hugo Sanchez was one of the best goal scorers in Mexican football history and during his time in Madrid he was a nightmare for Barcelona. Now, the son of one of his former team-mates could be the man to beat Barcelona," wrote the Spanish football magazine Don Balon a week ago.

No regular watcher of the Premier League needs me to tell you why Barca should fear Javier Hernandez - the offspring of former Mexico striker Javier Hernandez Gutierrez - when he's on the field.

The debate in Spain about who Sir Alex Ferguson will field at Wembley sees almost every pundit believing Barca stand a better chance of beating United if the Premier League champions opt for the more conservative 4-5-1 formation, with Rooney as the sole front man to start with.

There is a large amount of jealousy that no La Liga club signed Hernandez. Photo: PA

Even at the start of the season, after the summer tour of the United States and the FA Community Shield but before he'd made his Premier League debut, the Spanish media were eulogising Chicharito.

"He's the most significant arrival at United for several years. After they [United] fell short against Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals last year, he could herald a return to the [Champions League] final after they had made it there in the two seasons before," wrote the Spanish newspaper Marca last August.

Part of the reason why Chicharito is so embedded in the Spanish psyche as United's potential bogey man is probably because of a sense of jealousy that no La Liga club was on the ball enough to sign him 18 months ago, around the time United started to make overtures about taking him to Manchester.

I am fairly sure that several scouts for Spanish clubs in Mexico have been hauled over the coals at not making their employers or clients aware of Chicharito's talent when he was at Guadalajara, where he had been playing since the age of nine.

After all, Mexico has been a provider of plenty of players for Spanish clubs over the years.

Barcelona themselves not so long ago recruited Giovani dos Santos - who wants to stay in Spain after a successful second half of the season on-loan from Spurs to Racing Santander - and then his brother Jonathan while they were teenagers and schooled them in their famous La Masia academy.

Historically, the best of all the Mexican players ever to have plied their trade in La Liga may have been Sanchez but in last summer's Mexico squad that went tothe World Cup, alongside Chicharito, there was Deportivo La Coruna's Andres Guardado and Barcelona's Rafael Marquez, although the latter soon moved on to the New York Red Bulls.

Parochial as it may seem, a good number of Spanish fans still think that every Spanish-speaking player should have the same attitude as Guardado who said upon his arrival at the Galician club in 2007: "I wanted to move to a Spanish club so I don't have any problems with the language and the non-Hispanic culture."

Talent alone doesn't just explain why Spain, not just Barca fans, fears Chicharito. Some of it also comes down to sheer green-eyed envy that Manchester United managed to whisk him away from under various La Liga clubs' noses.

The purported transfer fee of £6m has also had Spanish commentators echoing what some English blogs have been suggesting, that he is Ferguson's best value signing in his 25 years as manager at Old Trafford.

Real Madrid fans are likely to give Manchester United their full backing on Saturday. Photo: Getty

Just about any La Liga club could have come up with that sort of money, and most wish they had.

However, just as the thought of Chicharito leaves plenty of Barca fans in a cold sweat - of course, many people also mention the danger of Rooney in front of goal but almost as an afterthought - there has been much smacking of lips in the Barcelona-biased media about the perceived weakness on the right side of United's defence.

The view has been regularly expressed in recent weeks that Ferdinand is not quite what he once was and whoever plays at right-back, whether it is O'Shea or Rafael, is a weak link that Messi, Villa and others will happily exploit.

It was O'Shea and Ferdinand who were on duty when the two teams last faced each other in the 2009 final in Rome, and Messi managed to make the pair look very ordinary far too often before getting the second goal that clinched the 2-0 victory 20 minutes from time.

The fact that the final will be played at Wembley also doesn't seem to dampen Barca spirits either.

"Wembley is a symbolic venue for Barca as much as Manchester United," added Don Balon, noting that Barcelona's first European Cup triumph - just like United's - came in London.

Not surprisingly, at least not to anyone with a passing knowledge of the politics of Spanish football, not all of the country will be urging Barcelona on to victory from in front of their television screens.

Manchester United will be getting vocal support from a fair number of disgruntled Real Madrid supporters, many still seething about their semi-final defeat to the Catalan club.

During a quick trawl of a few bars in and around Madrid last weekend, I chatted to various Real fans and quickly established that quite a significant percentage - I wouldn't dare to hazard a guess at a number given the unscientific way the research was done - were prepared to put the club rivalry and traditional enmity above national loyalty.

However, vice-versa, you don't have to have astonishing powers of insight to realise that there might also be a few Liverpool and Manchester City fans cheering for Barcelona on Saturday night.

Lionel Messi got plenty of deserved plaudits a few weeks ago when he became the first player to score 50 goals in a Spanish campaign, so it's only appropriate that due recognition is paid to Ronaldo now that he has also reached that memorable milestone.

Ronaldo's two fantastic goals, both free-kick thunderbolts, in Real's 3-1 win at Villarreal on Sunday took his tally to 38 league goals for the season and 51 in all competitions, adding to the seven he has got in the Copa del Rey and six in the Champions League.

It is his La Liga statistics that stand out even, though his extra-time header in the Copa del Rey final, which gave Real a 1-0 win over Barcelona and Jose Mourinho his first trophy as the Madrid coach, may go down as his most significant strike of the season.

Ronaldo has an opportunity to step out of Messi's shadow. Photo - AP

In Ronaldo's 33 league games, 26 goals have gone in with his right foot, eight with his left and he's scored four headers. Four have come from free-kicks and eight from the penalty spot.

His two most recent goals on Sunday led him to equal the seasonal tallies of two of the most famous names in Spanish football: Athletic Bilbao's Telmo Zarra and Real's Hugo Sanchez, who scored 38 goals apiece in the 1950-51 and 1989-90 seasons.

Zarra reached his mark in 30 La Liga games and Sanchez did it in 36. By contrast, Ronaldo has done it in 33.

"The truth is, I never expected to score so many goals this season. It's an honour to be considered alongside these two greats of football," said Ronaldo rather modestly on Sunday.

It's an understandable statement considering that Gonzalo Higuain and Karim Benzema started the season as the focal points of the Real attack. But Mourinho quickly gave Ronaldo an almost free rein to do what he liked and go wherever he wanted.

Even if equalling Zarra and Sanchez's record did go a little bit under the radar in many other countries across Europe as they were preoccupied with their own title races and promotion and relegation battles, Ronaldo made plenty of headlines in Spain.

"Cristiano is now a legend," said Spanish sports daily Marca. "Cristiano is in Olympus alongside Zarra and Hugo Sanchez," added its rival As.

Even if their front pages lurched towards hyperbole, you cannot deny that Ronaldo deserves the credit.

Everything now is being set up for the Portuguese star to take sole possession of the record on Saturday when Real play host to bottom club Almeria, a team who have kept only one clean sheet at home all season and memorably went down 8-0 to Barcelona in November.

"Very few reach these figures (of Ronaldo's goals). It's something only three players in history have done. Reaching this figure says everything about Cristiano's talent," said Real team captain Iker Casillas on Tuesday.

"We can't win anything more as a team but we can help Cristiano achieve it [the record]. It's important that our team-mate gets as many goals as possible and is honoured as one of the best strikers in the world," he added, hinting that there can be some fun on Saturday at Almeria's expense.

It certainly doesn't look like it's going to be the typical tepid end-of-season kickabout between two teams with nothing left to play for.

Critics of Ronaldo will still argue that he doesn't do the business in the big games and that getting a hatful against Almeria will prove nothing.

Perhaps he will never shed that reputation until he does something spectacular in a Champions League final or Portugal jersey.

However, this season, in part thanks to Mourinho speaking the same language as him, literally and metaphorically, his head has rarely gone down when it has mattered.

Madrid's star player is hoping to get his hands on a memorable milestone. Photo - AP

His Copa del Rey goal showed that and Real Madrid's failure to advance past Barcelona in the Champions League could hardly be laid at his feet.

His two goals against Villarreal and four at Sevilla just over a week ago were against teams whose places in Europe next season was still not settled.

In addition to further domestic glory, Ronaldo also has a chance to achieve a feat of huge continental significance.

The Golden Shoe is as-good-as his but not since 'Der Bomber' Gerd Muller, scored 40 goals for Bayern Munich in the 1971-72 season has a striker in one of Europe's big leagues won it with as many goals in a single campaign.

In fact, tallies in the mid-20s have been sufficient to win the award on several occasions in the last decade.

Yes, there have been players in the Austrian, Georgian, Portuguese and Romanian leagues who have reached 40 goals since Muller's mark. I'm also not forgetting the 43 that David Taylor bagged for Porthmadog in the League of Wales, which won him the European Golden Boot award in 1994.

However, with the greatest of respect to the likes of Eusebio, Mario Jardel, Hans Krankl and a few others who also got 40 goals or more in a season; I think everyone knows what we are talking about here.

Ronaldo may even have the last laugh over his rival Messi, who has currently got 52 goals in all competitions, but has not found the net in Barca's last five games, since he scored twice in the controversial Champions League, semi-final first leg at the Bernabeu.

Messi is likely to be on the bench in Barcelona's last league game at Malaga on Saturday as Pep Guardiola rests key players ahead of the Champions League final against Manchester United on 28 May.

If Ronaldo continues his recent scoring spree at Almeria, Messi may have to get past the likes of Edwin van der Sar, Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and whoever Sir Alex Ferguson opts for at right back, if he is to retain his bragging rights.

The Rossoneri are generally considered to be worthy champions and you will not hear too many complaints from fans of other teams that they were robbed.

Yes, reservations have been aired about the quality of football at times during the course of this Serie A campaign - and Inter must have wished it could have been extended another month or so after their terrific run over the second half of the season.

In truth, however, their chance of winning a sixth successive title really came to an end when they went down 3-0 in the Milan derby at the beginning of April.

The understandable elation in the red and black half of the city has yet to subside but Milan and their president Silvio Berlusconi have already taken stock of the situation.

Coach Massimiliano Allegri and striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic celebrate winning the tile - photo: Getty

Despite winning their first league title since 2004, the reality is that in recent seasons they have fallen badly short on the European stage. In the last three years they have not able to compete with the likes of Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid, despite their illustrious history, and that reality seems to have finally dawned on Berlusconi, who has ambitions to win the Champions League once again.

This season, Milan went out to Tottenham in the last 16, the third time in four seasons they hade exited at the same stage and each time to Premier League opposition, a far cry from earlier in the decade when they were twice Champions League winners, with their 2007 triumph against Liverpool taking their tally to seven in total.

The team's deficiencies were also laid bare earlier this season when Real, who in truth were still finding their feet after the arrival of Jose Mourinho, beat them 2-0 in the Santiago Bernabeu during the group stage and then drew 2-2 in Milan after dominating the first half.

Too old or too slow has been the usual criticism of Milan in the last two to three years, as various icons have gradually reached their sell-by date. It's an easy attack to make but, in this case, it also looks like an accurate one.

Filippo Inzaghi's strike rate has naturally diminished as time has gone on, despite the occasional marvellous reminder of the striker he used to be, such as his two goals in the aforementioned draw with Real.

Defenders like Alessandro Nesta and Massimo Oddo have lost their speed, even if they can compensate against less testing domestic opposition with vision and anticipation, and even the indefatigable Clarence Seedorf has become less-and-less effective in the last two years.

Berlusconi finally put aside his reluctance to open his wallet last summer, which many astute pundits believe was one of the root causes of their lack of continental competitiveness from 2008 onwards, a period when their rivals across the Mediterranean were spending millions of euros in the transfer market.

Milan added to their forward line by signing Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Robinho, and boosted their strikeforce again when Serie A bad boy Antonio Cassano arrived in January, but now the time has come to address other areas if they are to challenge seriously in Europe.

Veteran defenders Nesta and Marek Jankulovski look set to part company with the club, although the latter has hardly made much of a contribution this season.

Midfielder Andrea Pirlo could also be leaving in the summer if Italian media reports in the last few days are to be believed, with Il Corriere dello Sport reporting on Thursday that Juventus have signed him on a three-year contract.

It would also be no surprise to see the likes of Gianluca Zambrotta and Gennaro Gattuso reduced to subsidiary roles next season as Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri rings the changes in the hope of making an impact on the Champions League again.

Milan have already begun strengthening their squad by signing Nigeria defender Taiwo - photo: Getty

With the domestic league tile secured, Milan moved swiftly into the transfer market this week to make the first two signings of what could become a deluge, Allegri announcing that they had acquired Roma's Philippe Mexes and Marseille's Taye Taiwo.

Mexes announced he was leaving Roma last month, and Milan was always his likely destination, but the signing of Taiwo came as a slight surprise as several other clubs, including Real Madrid, were thought to be chasing the Nigerian international defender.

"For the defence we have bought those two players and I think we are fine like this. We will see later for the midfield and attack," said Allegri.

Rumours are now rife about which other players may soon be on their way to Italy's second city.

"We have already bought Mexes and Taiwo, but I do not do names. But we'll definitely buy some more players, the squad will be further reinforced," added Milan chief executive, and Berlusconi's right hand man, Adriano Galliani.

Other names being thrown around have included the Brazilian pair Ganso, from Santos, and Kaka, who might be on his way back from Real to Milan, where he spent six seasons and was three times the Serie A Player of the Year as well as the 2007 Fifa World Player of the Year.

Allegri has made no secret of the fact that he admires both men.

"They are both great players. For Kaka, his career speaks for itself. Ganso is still young and has great quality, but if he comes to Europe he will have to show a lot more," added Allegri earlier this week.

In their search for a creative midfielder, super-talented Argentine teenager Erik Lamela of River Plate has apparently been lined up as plan B if they can't get Ganso.

It looks like a summer of upheavals ahead in and around the San Siro after Galliani's confirmation that they could be this summer's big spenders among Europe's top clubs.

However, I wonder what grim thoughts were really being formed behind that famous pronounced forehead and bushy moustache as he witnessed the Champions League semi-final second leg between Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Did his remaining hair turn just a little greyer over the course of those 90 minutes, which ended with Barcelona progressing 3-1 on aggregate to the Champions League final at Wembley on 28 May, or was it my imagination?

One of the symptoms could be a very detrimental effect on Spain's Euro 2012 campaign.

At the moment, Spain are one of only three teams, Germany and the Netherlands being the others, who have a 100% record in the qualifiers; Del Bosque could probably pick a team without including anyone from Real and Barca and Spain would still get to the finals.

But what happens next summer?

The debate, of course, will continue indefinitely about whether Real were 'robbed' by the referees over the two legs of the Champions League or whether Barcelona were the deserved winners.

Ironically Real's win in the Copa Del Rey and the 1-1 draw in the Santiago Bernabeu, which as good as clinched the Spanish title for Barca, have been virtually forgotten in the wake of the two bitter and bad-tempered matches which followed them.

"Justice or the black hand?" asked the country's leading mainstream newspaper El Pais on Wednesday morning.

Just as with affiliations with the two clubs, this is a debate that has divided the country, as I witnessed personally on Tuesday night when I left the bar where I watched the match and walked home in the small town where I live just north of Madrid.

Passing a number of other watering holes, the issues were being hotly disputed elsewhere and several discussions looked like they were reaching boiling point and about to turn ugly. I'm sure quite a few local police forces across Spain had a busy night.

Personally, some of my sympathies lie with the two match referees Germany's Wolfgang Stark and Belgium's Frank De Bleeckere, who had an almost impossible task when a good number of players from both sides deliberately tried to fool them over the course of the two legs.

This also made me wonder why Uefa still insists on imposing foreign referees on ties involving clubs from the same country?

Even an experienced and respected official like Slovakia's Lubos Michel made hard work of controlling the 2008 Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea.

Wouldn't an English referee, who would have understood the nuances of a domestic tie much better, have been more appropriate on that occasion and wouldn't a pair of Spanish referees have been a wiser choice over the course of the last week?

Nevertheless, however hard the Real players may complain, these games are now history and it is Barcelona who progressed.

Uefa are not going to order a replay, however shrill and persistent are Real's cries of indignation.

Vicente Del Bosque became the Spanish national team coach in 2008. Picture: AP

Returning to Del Bosque, he has now been unwittingly handed the task at national level of being thrust into the role of peacemaker between two warring groups of players, who have fallen out in spectacular and acrimonious fashion in the last couple of weeks.

The joyous and united group of 23 players who lifted the World Cup in Johannesburg - which included four Real Madrid players, seven from Barcelona, and David Villa who was soon to move from Valencia to Barca - and then paraded it deliriously around Madrid in an open-topped bus, does not seem to be a band of brothers any more.

"I haven't liked certain comments and the way that some things have happened on the field. Many people have noticed it, there's no getting around it," commented Del Bosque diplomatically on Tuesday night.

The mutual dislike and distrust that now exists between the contingents from Barca and Real Madrid in his squad is there for all to see.

Several Real players, including their erstwhile World Cup team-mates Iker Casillas and Xabi Alonso, went public with accusations about Busquets and Pedro after their over-theatrical collapsing to the ground during the first leg.

"Things between us (the Barcelona and Real Madrid players) have deteriorated," admitted Xabi Alonso, stating the obvious, on Wednesday night.

For their part, the Barca playmakers Xavi and Andres Iniesta also stoked the fire of acrimony that is now roaring between the two sets of players after the second leg.

"This club was superior, we rose to the occasion. Everyone can read into this what they want," said Iniesta.

"What we've seen is football justice. The best team got through to the final," added Xavi.

Let's be quite clear about this, on this occasion, the breakdown between the players themselves, especially when you take into consideration the foreign element on both sides, has very little, almost nothing, to do with those two very valid political stereotypes of Castilla versus Catalonia.

It's just plain old enmity.

Del Bosque now has very little time to sort things out and whatever he does will have to be a bit better than the old playground remedy of shaking hands and saying you are sorry for being rude.

Last week, it was announced that Spain will play Venezuela on 1 June in Maracaibo and then face the United States in Foxborough, just outside Boston, three days later.

It has not been the Spanish federation's habit to let their top players linger on the sidelines even for friendlies, as evidenced by the squad that was selected for last August's much-criticised game in Mexico.

Neither of their two imminent hosts, who will have paid good money for the privilege of playing the world champions, will also want to see the entire contingent of Barcelona players absent, although common sense suggests that it might be wise to leave them out considering the fact that they will have been at Wembley just a few days before.

Spain also have a game lined up against Italy in Milan on 11 August but any mediation work that Del Bosque could bring to bear at that point might be quickly undone in the following weeks as the Spanish Supercup, the traditional season curtain-raiser, will see Barcelona play Real Madrid home and away in less than a week.

At least, Spain's next serious fixture is four months away, when they restart their Euro 2012 campaign with a relatively soft match against Liechtenstein.

By then, any simmering grudges could have receded, like De Bosque's hairline, but I'm not so sure they will have.

Real are unbeaten in the first two of four back-to-back meetings in 18 days and their success on Wednesday will have fortified them for the two Champions League semi-final encounters to come.

We learned several things from Real's cup win. First and foremost, it showed Barcelona can be beaten.

With a nice bit of symmetry, their 18th Copa arrived 18 years after they last lifted the trophy. Cristiano Ronaldo headed the only goal of the game in the first half of extra time after Mourinho, partially reversing his policy of four days before, had chosen to put out an attacking side.

Full credit should go to Real for absorbing the onslaught that Barca launched in the second half and then coming out as the better team after 90 minutes had elapsed.

Real should now have eradicated the inferiority complex that seemed evident in recent years, whichever coach was at the helm, and can approach the Champions League ties with some optimism of progressing to the final at Wembley on 28 May.

On an individual level, Ronaldo deserves full marks. He not only scored the winner but also quietened many of his critics, including me, with a superb display for the entire 120 minutes.

Now when anyone talks about his previous tendency to disappear in big games, his defenders need only point to his performance on Wednesday night to suggest that is no longer the case.

For once, Ronaldo's head did not go down when things were not going in his favour.

Barca's back four did their best to upset him with niggling tackles but he rode them with aplomb and did not get drawn into pretty retribution. In a game with eight yellow cards, he stayed out of trouble.

His goal also took his season's tally in all competitions to 43, beating his record of 42 at Manchester United in 2007/8. That was the season he won the Golden Boot and was voted as Fifa World Player of the Year.

A headline in the Spanish sports newspaper Marca on Thursday read: "A dream night for Cristiano Ronaldo." It would be churlish to disagree with that statement.

His efforts have surely elevated him into the Real pantheon. He has equalled the 43 goals that Alfredo di Stefano and Hugo Sanchez respectively scored in the 1956-57 and 1989-90 seasons. Only Ferenc Puskas, with 49 goals in 1959-60, is now ahead of him in Real's record books.

To use a metaphor appropriate to the Wagnerian weather that engulfed Madrid as Real fans made their way to the Cibeles fountains to celebrate the victory, will Ronaldo show that lightning can strike twice or three times in the coming weeks?

The recent games between Real and Barcelona have also shown that Pepe is an accomplished defensive midfielder. Mourinho's search for someone to play that role could be over.

If there was another Real hero other than Ronaldo on Wednesday, it was Pepe. Mourinho had moved the Portuguese international from his usual position in the centre of the defence to good effect on Saturday and repeated the ploy four days later.

"We expected something like this," said Barca coach Pep Guardiola on Saturday night. "Pepe is strong player, very experienced and has been very difficult [to beat]. Seeing his qualities, we knew that he was going to play well so it didn't come as a surprise to us."

Pepe was also a constant menace up front, almost opening the scoring with a header that pinged off the woodwork just before half-time.

Adding to the Portuguese flavour of the team that Mourinho is starting to create in his own image, Ricardo Carvalho again provided a master class in astute defending.

Regardless of what happens in the Champions League, Real's success almost certainly means Mourinho will still be their coach at the start of next season.

And the final itself lifted the Copa out of its traditional slot as a sideshow to the battles for La Liga and the Champions League.

Early viewing figures showed that Wednesday night's match was the most watched domestic game between two Spanish club sides in history, attracting more than 14.1m viewers - an audience share of 73%.

Now the spotlight switches to the Champions League and it will be fascinating to see whether the Spanish public's appetite for El Clasico was sated or only whetted by the Copa del Rey.

After Saturday's match the two clubs meet in the Copa del Rey final on 20 April, which will be followed by their two-legged Champions League semi-final - with the first game at Real's Bernabeu stadium on 27 April and Barca hosting the second on 3 May.

Both teams have a chance of winning the Treble, a feat only achieved in Spanish football history by Barca two years.

However, Real are eight points behind the defending Spanish champions with only seven games to go and as Madrid's coach Jose Mourinho admitted after the recent defeat by Sporting Gijon, mathematically the league might not be lost, but "in practical terms it is".

Mourinho's Real were beaten 5-0 by Guardiola's Barca in November - photo: AFP.

The juxtaposition of three Cup games makes you wonder whether pragmatism and pride will dictate that Mourinho puts out a weaker team than he might have done on Saturday in a bid to salvage something from Real's season.

Will he rest the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Marcelo or will the special demands of an El Clasico match ensure Mourinho has no alternative but to throw them into the fray and hope that they survive for that trio of Cup games.

Both men started Wednesday's game against Spurs but neither looked as though they had fully recovered from their recent injuries, with their return to action being precipitated in time for the first leg in the Champions League quarter-final against Spurs.

The same question could also be asked of Barca coach Pep Guardiola, who might feel that with such a cushion at the top of the table it might be a valid strategy to leave the likes of, who else, Lionel Messi, on the bench.

All of which has prompted many pundits in Spain to wonder whether this might turn out to be the most diluted El Clasico in recent memory.

Nevertheless, this quartet of matches could have a profound effect on the future of both coaches, which means that full-strength sides, with patched-up star players, may yet be the order of the day.

After eliminating Spurs, Mourinho maintained that he was likely to put out his 11 best men on Saturday: "Each of the Clasicos will be completely independent of each other in this context. Each one will not have any significance in relation to the one before or the one after."

Ronaldo has scored 28 league goals this season, one fewer than Messi - photo: AFP.

Nevertheless, most people believe that whoever gets the upper hand on Saturday will also get a psychological boost for the other three games.

For Real there is also the matter of laying to rest the ghost of their dismantlement by Barca in that humiliating 5-0 defeat in the Nou Camp last November.

Speculation persists in Spain that Mourinho might yet leave in the summer if he and Real were to suffer the blow of four poor results against Barca, let us say two draws in the Bernabeu and a couple of defeats in the other games.

Personally, I don't think that will happen because Mourinho and Real have individually and collectively backed themselves into a corner.

Just like the oft-quoted statistic that the Spanish economic recession has led to fewer divorces but more couples sleeping in separate bedrooms under the same roof, neither Mourinho and Real have anywhere else to go, at least for another season.

They must make the most of their marriage made in relative haste last summer.

Mourinho has an estimated salary of £11.5m and plenty of influence behind he scenes at the Bernabeu now that he has managed to partially mould Real in his own image and neuter his rival for influence, general director Jorge Valdano.

Likewise, who would Real turn to if Mourinho is unable to deliver a record 10th European Cup? More importantly would they want to pay off the remainder of his contract?

Financially, of course, Real could find the money but it would be a ruinously expensive public relations exercise, though it would confirm Real's Florentino Perez as the ultimate hire them and fire them president, after dismissing seven previous coaches in seven years during two stints in his current role.

Over in Barcelona, Guardiola does not believe that Mourinho and Real are the underdogs that the European media have portrayed them ahead of these four games.

"It's the chance to compete with one the strongest teams around," said Guardiola. "We shall accept the challenge and go for it. It doesn't matter what condition we are in. What matters is mentality and desire."

Conversely, if Real do rise to the occasion and grab their first Copa del Rey since 1993 - the longest period in their history that the club have gone without winning the Spanish Cup - and then eliminate Barca from the Champions League, it might have the reverse effect and lead to Guardiola contemplating his future.

Guardiola took over the reins of Barca in the summer of 2008 but could easily tear up the one-year extension to his contract he signed in February that was designed to keep him at the Nou Camp until the end of next season.

He caught everyone on the hop at the start of this month by saying: "I think my time is ending here in Barcelona. I'm fine here, but when you're at a club like this you cannot stay for too long.

"Next year will be the fourth consecutive season as coach of Barcelona. Such a club must have a lot of courage to take a coach for so long, because the players get tired of coaches and vice-versa."

If Mourinho turned the table on Guardiola, would the 40-year-old former Spain international find his courage evaporating?

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Of course they can. Logic dictates that any one of the remaining eight teams in this year's competition has a chance to lift the trophy at Wembley on May 28.

However, is it a realistic proposition that it will be Real Madrid who will win a first title since 2002?

Mourinho's Real Madrid had won all 14 of their previous home games this season. Picture: Reuters

Was their 1-0 defeat at the hands of Sporting Gijon, which brought coach Jose Mourinho's streak of going over nine years and 150 games since his last home defeat in a league game to an end, just a blip on the radar or a symptom of more deep-rooted malaise that Tottenham can exploit to their benefit on Tuesday night?

My feeling is that it was the former and Real Madrid will make big strides towards the semi-finals by bouncing back thanks to some of Mourinho's psychology lessons.

After the hugely impressive performance in the 3-0 victory over Lyon in the second leg in the last round, the French side's coach Claude Puel commented: "We could not match them. Real Madrid can go on to win the Champions League."

It was a sentiment with which Mourinho concurred and the belief is still there that they can lift Europe's top club prize despite having now effectively thrown in the towel on challenging their bitter rivals Barcelona for this year's domestic title.

"Of course it will be difficult to face teams like Manchester United, Chelsea or Barcelona, but I have no fear of them," said the former Manchester City striker Emmanuel Adebayor on Sunday, still sounding resoundingly optimistic.

"I think with this team and this coach, this club can win the Champions (League)."

If their squad is fit, and that is the big issue rather than its inherent talent, Real certainly have the resources to go all the way this time.

Critics, and I was certainly among them for the first few months of the season when it seemed like there was very little cohesion among the team and Mourinho was just throwing 11 individual talents onto the pitch as he might do if he was coaching a Sunday pub side, will point to the now famous 5-0 defeat by Barcelona in November and Saturday's lapse against Sporting Gijon as reasons why the current Real Madrid side still don't have what it takes.

However, both defeats, and perhaps they will be seen at the end of the season as pivotal points in Mourinho's first year at the club, should be taken in context.

At the Camp Nou, Mourinho was still finding his feet and because of the very special nature of El Clasico and the fact that most of their players had by then got through the 'World Cup hangover' that seemed to affect most of the Spanish squad that triumphed in South Africa, Barcelona played one of their best games of recent seasons, even by their own exalted standards.

It's possibly fair to say that they haven't played that well, or had to play that well, since and a chastened Real bounced back with some outstanding outings in the following few months.

Saturday's defeat was against an exceptionally motivated Sporting Gijon after some bad blood between the two sides earlier in the season.

Several Sporting players also wanted prove a point after having gone public with the fact that they were boyhood Atletico Madrid or Barcelona fans.

There was also David Barral, one of Sporting's best players up front on Saturday, who has always been bitter about the fact that having gone through the Real youth system he was never given a chance to play for the first team and always seems to turn it on against his former club.

Real were also decimated by injuries to key players.

Cristiano Ronaldo and the much-improved Karim Benzema as well as Xabi Alonso and Marcelo, two men who have been among the most consistent and impressive performers for Real this season, were all missing.

In theory, Ronaldo and Marcelo were also due to miss the Spurs game - "Cristiano, Benzema and Marcelo will only be able to play against Athletic
Bilbao," said Mourinho on Friday - but on Monday morning there was the strong suggestions that Mourinho will throw them into the fray against Harry Redknapp's men.

It may be a price worth paying, even if it means that they ultimately miss next weekend's league game at Athletic Bilbao.

Against Lyon, Ronaldo was clearly not fully fit after suffering a hamstring injury two weeks previously but the Real Madrid doctors worked their magic and he managed to play for 70 minutes.

Even if he was not quite the dominating force that he had been earlier in the season, he still had an influence on proceedings and set up the opening goal for Marcelo.

Ronaldo's hamstring only lasted another 70 minutes and he was injured again the following weekend in the derby against Atletico and has not played in the last two weeks.

Gambling on his player's health, and perhaps even sacrificing it, might be seen by Mourinho as a valid tactic as his appointment last summer was always about winning the Champions League, with La Liga taking secondary priority.

Real president Florentino Perez was also in charge of the club in 2002 when they won their last Champions League title, their third in five years and a record ninth in total, but since then their progress in the competition has steadily declined.

They went out in successively earlier rounds for the next three years and didn't get beyond the last 16 for six consecutive years, only reversing that trend in this campaign.

Perez is desperate for those glory days to return, having seen his club eclipsed on the continental stage by Barcelona's more recent triumphs.

The only problem for Perez, Mourinho and their players is that if they get past Spurs then the aforementioned Barcelona (or possibly Shakhtar Donestsk, but it would be an almighty upset if the Ukrainians beat the Spanish champions) will await them in the semi-finals.

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Games in the Spanish first division will finally go ahead this weekend after a Madrid court ruled on Wednesday that the top-tier clubs couldn't withdraw their labour after all.

However, the concluding comments of the presiding magistrate Purification Pujol were hardly an overwhelming endorsement of the six so-called "rebel" clubs - Sevilla, Villarreal, Real Zaragoza, Espanyol, Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad - who took legal action to have the strike called off.

"The League has adopted the calendar and it would be a very unusual situation if we were to reject this injunction which would then result in a sudden change in the calendar," said Pujol, making little comment about the reasons behind the strike call.

What this means is that the strike is off for now. However the remaining 14 clubs, who wanted to cancel this weekend's games - which included a tricky visit by league leaders Barcelona to third-placed Villarreal - are still frothing at the mouth to get changes to the broadcasting laws that means at least one game every weekend has to be available on free-to-air television.

The cancellation of the strike allows Barcelona to try to do the 'double' over Villarreal. Photo: Getty

You might well ask, as people have been for the last six weeks or so, why this issue has cropped up now, when the law has been in place since 1997.

And why has it been presented with the sort of tub-thumping rhetoric usually more associated with trade unions rather than Spain's football club presidents, self-styled captains of industry?

Obviously, the broadcasting industry has changed in the last decade and the numbers of channels has grown hugely in most European nations.

In Spain, there are several dedicated football-only channels, usually available by subscription, along with various club's own channels such as Barca TV and Real Madrid TV, which are widely available, via satellite TV or broadband packages.

More importantly, though, the answer is that the Spanish first division clubs are now paying, literally in some cases, for years of financial mismanagement.

Jose Luis Astiazaran, president of the LFP, the federation of Spanish professional football clubs, revealed rather discretely on a well-known radio show last week that Spanish clubs - including the second division clubs that were not going to go on strike - currently owe the Spanish tax authorities 694m Euros.

In some cases, the debts extend back for more than a decade. With the Spanish economy in crisis and government's budget deficits still not under control, the taxmen are no longer in the mood to be lenient about when the cash will come in.

They are putting pressure - fairly subtly at the moment but with some clubs it is bound to get nasty - to get their money, and reasonably quickly.

By contrast, Astiazaran reckons that if the clubs themselves had complete control over the TV rights deals and the once-a-week fans' freebie was scrapped, it could be worth 800m Euros in the medium term.

I think you get the picture - as long as you have paid for it, if you'll pardon the pun. If the government acquiesces on broadcasting rights, then they get their taxes paid.

It also means that more clubs can balance their books and also, as quietly expressed by several senior LFP officials, makes them less likely to come under foreign ownership, which is what happened in January when the Bahrain-based Indian businessman Ahsan Ali Syed bought Racing Santander.

There is still a huge resistance in Spain - often for xenophobic reasons - to the type of takeovers that have become commonplace in the Premier League but when Syed took over the perennial mid-table Racing, the core part of the deal was that he paid off the club's tax bill, which were thought to have risen to 20m Euros and which effectively was two-thirds of the purchase price.

Ahsan Ali Syed bought Racing Santander in January. Photo: Getty

The scene is now set for things to get bloody during the summer between the LFP - which has hardly come out smelling of roses in this debate - and the Spanish government.

Let's not be naïve; it is one of the few big issues which the beleaguered ruling party of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has got extensive public backing on and so it wouldn't be a surprise to see them milking it for all its worth ahead of next year's national elections.

But I wouldn't be surprised to find the start of next season delayed by several weeks if the wrangling isn't resolved quickly.

Continuing the theme of football strikes, there could be one by the Rayo Vallecano players on Saturday.

The Spanish second division leaders, who hail from Madrid's less-than-salubrious southern suburbs, are bidding to return to the top flight next season after being relegated in 2003 and even spending four years in Spain's semi-professional third tier, the Segunda B.

The players have not been paid since the start of the season, despite creditably giving their all on the field in recent months, including a 1-0 win over second placed Real Betis last Sunday.

"We aren't ruling out refusing to travel to Valladolid. It's a situation no one in the squad wants but it is an alternative we have," Rayo team captain Michel told a media conference on Wednesday.

"We feel we are on our own. No one is helping us. The LFP wants more money but the players don't get paid," he added.

"At the last meeting with the [Rayo] owners they said they would try to do something from ticket sales, but we haven't seen a euro. We feel as though someone isn't being straight with us.

"We are also owed money from last season. We have received some money, it is different for each player, but they still owe us money from last year," commented Michel, despite the fact that clubs are supposed to clear all their debts to players by the end of each season to avoid automatic relegation.

For more background on what has been happening at Rayo, I can recommend a very good When Saturday Comes article written a few weeks ago.

However, with a three-point deduction for failing to fulfil a fixture, Rayo players have become adamant over the last week that they are prepared to sacrifice promotion in exchange for something in their pay packets.

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The noises emanating from Les Bleus' training camp at Clairefontaine in the last few days have been positive ones. Harmony, at least on the surface and in public, has been restored. Pulling on a French jersey has become fun again rather than a chore, according to captain Alou Diarra.

After the 1-0 home defeat by Belarus which opened their Euro 2012 qualifying campaign, some wondered whether Blanc had really been the right choice to succeed the much-maligned Raymond Domenech.

Since then, however, Blanc's team have rattled off three straight wins to stand on top of their group.

Nevertheless, the signs are definitely now there that this is a French team growing in stature and that could be contenders at Euro 2012, a point of view supported by their 1-0 win over Brazil in February.

Yes, Brazil played the second half with 10 men but nevertheless, there were periods when France shone, in particular Jeremy Menez down the right flank.

Credit also has to be given to Karim Benzema, who has been looking the part for both Real Madrid and France in recent months, benefiting from shrewd psychology of both club coach Jose Mourinho and Blanc.

The forthcoming fixture list should enable Blanc to consolidate his progress so far.

A visit to Luxembourg on Friday night should see France add to their points tally in their qualifying group and they then have a series of friendlies which will allow him to make some gentle experiments.

Croatia visit the Stade de France next Tuesday and France are then away to Euro 2012 co-hosts Ukraine and Poland on 6 and 9 June, three games which will provide a perfect opportunity to have a look around at who has done well in the second half of the season and introduce a little new blood 12 months ahead of the next major tournament.

Blanc has offered an olive branch to Franck Ribery, one of the ringleaders of the infamous World Cup training ground strike in Knysna, by recalling him to the squad for the game against Luxembourg.

Ribery was given a three-match ban after the World Cup squad returned home and injuries have kept him out of more recent French squads, but it is significant that Blanc has been prepared to restore the Bayern Munich player despite the emergence of Roma's Menez.

On Monday, Ribery faced the press at Blanc's insistence after refusing to talk to them for many months. Apart from a mild tirade at the French media's intrusion into his private life, he mainly said all the right things.

"I've not been afraid of returning to the French team, I saw Laurent Blanc about three or four months ago and then I saw him after last week's match against Inter. There has been much discussed, and it made me feel much better. I want to thank him because returning to French team always been a dream," said the penitent forward.

"I want to draw a line under the past, I've made mistakes, both in my private life and as a footballer, but I was touched by the support I received from Blanc, he made it clear that he really wanted me back in the fold."

Perhaps under Blanc, Ribery can revisit his halcyon era of 2006 to 2008 when he was indisputably one of the best wingers in the world.

When fit, he has always seemed to respond on the field to a coach that gives him a bit of love and the relationship between Ribery and Blanc seems to be an affectionate one.

Ribery (left) and Patrice Evra are both back in favour with France - photo: AP

Blanc admitted earlier this week that he still isn't sure how he is going to use Ribery.

"There will be a discussion. He started with the national team on the right, where he was very impressive. He prefers the left wing, which makes sense because that is where he plays for his club," he said.

However, Chelsea's Florent Malouda has featured on the left side of the French attack in recent matches and Blanc added: "I believe he [Ribery] can play anywhere across the attack. He is capable of beating his man no matter what area of the pitch he is in."

If Ribery makes the starting line-up, it might be at the expense of Lyon's Yoann Gourcuff, who is struggling to fulfil the promise shown in recent seasons and is having a mediocre time with both his club and country.

Blanc started with Gourcuff against Luxembourg last October and also Brazil but he put in two erratic performances. Friday may see him on the bench.

Along with Ribery, Blanc also recalled Patrice Evra for the first time since the World Cup.

In the Manchester United left-back's case, after being banned for five matches after leading the World Cup revolt as the team captain and then being overlooked by Blanc for the Brazil match, his selection was more a forced one owing to Barcelona's Eric Abidal being unavailable following surgery on a liver tumour.

Evra may go straight into the starting line-up - and his United form certainly warrants it - but Blanc has made it clear that he will not regain the captain's armband, now worn by Diarra.

Luxembourg is often described as the 'crossroads of Europe' and maybe on Friday night it will turn out to be the crossroads where Blanc and the French team finally turn a corner after the events of last summer.

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Public disagreements with the then Chelsea chairman Ken Bates and Newcastle hero Alan Shearer during his stints at those clubs seem to pale by comparison to trying to make a club competitive that finished 12th out of 16 teams in the Russian top flight last season, just three points above the relegation zone.

There is also the political situation in Chechnya to take into account.

Even though the mood in Grozny, the capital city, has been a lot calmer in the last two years since the Russian government in Moscow managed to reassert its control over the region, the social, economic and psychological scars after two wars in the last 20 years still remain.

Gullit has signed an 18-month contract with Russian club Terek Grozny - photo: AP.

Nevertheless, Gullit was undaunted when he took over in January.

"My aim is to get the club into the top five of the Premier League and so into Europe. I want some of my players to make the grade in the Russian international team," said the Dutchman.

That may prove a tall order. The only time Terek have ventured into continental competition was a brief campaign in the Uefa Cup after winning the Russian Cup in 2004 when they were still a Second Division team.

The Russian Premier League is a tough division, but teams have yet to truly make their mark on the continental stage despite CSKA Moscow winning the Uefa Cup in 2005.

Zenit St Petersburg may have only lost two games last season to win their second title in four seasons but they and Spartak Moscow, who lead the way after winning the Russian championship nine times since the break up of the Soviet Union, and the latter's local rivals CSKA and Lokomotiv, as well as Rubin Kazan, are all closely matched.

Gullit's men will have to break into that group if they are to meet the Dutchman's target.

Nobody is saying officially how much Gullit is being paid to try and establish Terek among Russia';s leading sides, but press reports have put his salary at just over £5m a year, with big bonuses if they qualify for the Champions League.

However, it still remains small change for 34-year-old Ramzan Kadyrov, who inherited the roles of regional and club president after his father Akhmad was assassinated at the Terek stadium by a bomb blast during a military parade in May 2004.

The authorities in Moscow are giving him an annual subsidy of nearly £2bn to renovate the city and he has ploughed a reasonable chunk of it into the club, building a new 30,000 capacity stadium for the club and opening up a new youth academy, named rather egotistically, Ramzan.

"Football is a way of fighting extremism," Kadyrov is fond of saying.

The new season started in Russia last weekend and it did not start the way Gullit, or Kadyrov, would have liked, with Terek suffering a 1-0 defeat at home to Zenit on Sunday.

The visitors, led by Italian coach Luciano Spalletti, who acquired cult status and provided plenty of front page photos in Russia when he stripped to the waist in freezing temperatures to celebrate his team clinching their title in November, won with a goal by Serbian striker Danko Lazovic.

Terek president Ramzan Kadyrov (left) apponted Gullit - photo: AFP.

"Ruud Gullit flunked his first exam in the Russian championship," read the headline in Sovetsky Sport.

However, the 48-eight-year Dutchman, who has an 18-month contract with his new club, was more upbeat after Sunday's game.

"I think you could see we still didn't play a real match in comparison with Zenit and we got into the game more slowly, but I'm very proud of my team, especially the way they picked up in the second half," said Gullit, who is well remembered in Russia for captaining the Netherlands to victory over the Soviet Union in the final of the Euro 88, and also scoring the first goal in that 2-0 win.

Regardless of how the rest of the season progresses for Gullit, Zenit will keep their crown as Russian champions until the middle of next year.

The Russian football federation has decided to break away from their traditional March-November schedule to try to synchronise with the rest of Europe, as well as assist their teams to progress further in the Champions League with a more helpful format, and the current season has been extended to May 2012.

If plenty of attention has been focused on Gullit's arrival at Terek, the other eye-catching news story since the end of last season in Russia has been the £27.6m Anzhi Makhachkala has spent on new players in the last two months.

Bought by Russian billionaire Suleyman Kerimov on 18 January - the same day that Gullit joined Terek - Anzhi Makhachkala's spending constitutes almost the same as the total winter spend of the Russian Premier League's other 15 clubs.

Anzhi's new boys include the exciting Dutch-born Moroccan international midfielder Mbark Boussoufa, who signed for them from Anderlecht only last week after turning down Gullit's offer to move to Terek.

Anzhi's most high-profile signing cost nothing, with 37-year-old former Brazilian international left back Roberto Carlos, who was a mainstay of Real Madrid's three most recent Champions League victories, arriving after being released from his contract by his former club Corinthians.

Comments on this blog in the space below. Other questions on European football to: europeanfootball@hotmail.co.uk. I do not need your full address but please put the town/city and country where you come from.

Q) I wondered what your view was on the attitude towards the Europa League across Europe. The tournament appears to be treated with considerable disdain in England with sides fielding weakened teams and generally viewing it as an inconvenience, rather than an opportunity to win a European trophy. Is this attitude widespread across the other major leagues in Spain, France, Germany, Portugal, Italy etc?
Nick Young, Liverpool, England

A) I can only give a personal impression but I get the feeling that you are right and that in Spain and Italy few clubs take the Europa League particularly seriously unless, by accident rather than design, they reach the knockout stages. This was certainly evident by the performances of Atletico Madrid and Getafe as well as Juventus, Palermo and Sampdoria in the group stages. With the greatest respect to the teams that finished ahead of them, you would not have expected all of them to go out if they had been, to use an English turn-of-phrase 'up for it'.

By contrast, having three Dutch clubs, three Portuguese clubs and three Russian clubs in the last 16 tends to suggest that the Europa League means more to clubs, and certainly at an earlier stage in the competition, in those countries than in Spain and Italy.

CSKA Moscow, Porto and PSV Eindhoven are names that immediately catch the eye - and Manchester City's next opponents, Dynamo Kiev, are no exception.

The pair meet for the very first time in a competitive match on Thursday, when they take to the field at the chilly Valeriy Lobanovskiy Dynamo Stadium, named after the Ukrainian side's famous former player and coach. Lobanovskiy - who died in 2002 - was at the helm when Dynamo won the Cup Winners' Cup in 1975 and 1986.

However, like City, it has been a long time since Dynamo achieved something of real significance in a continental competition.

Admittedly, they made the Champions League semi-finals back in 1999 and got to the Uefa Cup semi-finals two seasons ago. But losing that match to local rivals Shakhtar Donetsk, who went on to beat Werder Bremen in the final and become the first Ukraine team to win a European trophy since the break-up of the Soviet Union, compounded the feeling in the Ukraine capital that their past glories were exactly that.

Despite the fact that to make any sort of further progress will require beating some other big names, this season there is the feeling that Dynamo can turn back the clock to when they were one of the dominant teams of the old Soviet Union and feared across Europe.

Andriy Shevchenko is enjoying a late-career flourish. Photo: Getty Images

Unbeaten in six Europa League games, Dynamo have become increasingly impressive. One of the reasons for the general feeling of optimism is that Yuri Semin has returned for a second stint as the club's coach.

He was appointed at the end of December as the permanent replacement for Valeri Gazzayev, who threw in the towel in October after a poor start to the season left Dynamo floundering at the bottom of their Europa League group and lagging a long way behind league leaders Shakhtar.

Former Arsenal and Wolves defender Oleg Luzhny then took over as the caretaker coach and had an immediate impact, turning things around quickly, apart from an initial 2-0 loss at Shakhtar.

However, once Semin became available after being sacked by Lokomotiv Moscow at the end of November, it was almost inevitable Luzhny was going to be asked to stand aside.

Semin remained a favourite with most Dynamo fans after his first stint at the club, which resulted in the club winning the Ukrainian title in 2009 and reaching the last four of the Uefa Cup that season.

Since taking over, Semin has not let the Dynamo faithful down - with Luzhny seemingly happy to stay by his side as a loyal assistant.

The recent demolition of Besiktas was followed up with a 2-0 win at Metalurh Donetsk on Saturday to provide a good start to the second half of the Ukrainian season after the country's long winter break.

It was also a reminder to Metalurh's richer neighbours that although Shakhtar have a massive 12-point lead in the Ukrainian Premier League, Dynamo have not given up the chase for their 14th title just yet.

"We are now very well prepared. I wanted us to win the match in the last round against Besiktas in impressive fashion, and it was especially important that we won the first match away from home. We did that and now we go on. It was good preparation for the match against Manchester City. I think we'll be even sharper against them and I'm optimistic that the result may be good," Semin told a local TV station on Sunday.

He hardly predicted that Dynamo would romp their way to the trophy but, for the often-cautious Semin, it was almost rampant euphoria.

Another cause for optimism is that Semin seems to have found the right touch and invigorated the evergreen former Chelsea striker Andriy Shevchenko, who scored in both legs against Besiktas.

Earlier in the year, the man who was instrumental in Milan winning the 2003 Champions League - not only for his winning strike in the penalty shoot-out against Juventus but also his efforts in the earlier rounds - looked, at 34, like he was losing his interest in the game and appetite for goals.

At one stage, there was even speculation that he would retire at the end of this campaign rather than carry on until next season, which culminates in Ukraine and Poland co-hosting Euro 2012 - at which Shevchenko has previously said that he is desperate to play.

Perhaps as big a danger to City though is Ukraine international right-sided midfielder Oleh Gusev, who hasn't attracted as much attention as Shevchenko as he has not played outside of his native land.

Like Shevchenko, he also scored twice against Besiktas, although scoring isn't his main attribute. The 27-year-old's speed and accuracy when crossing the ball could pose a huge threat to City's often-erratic defence.

Gusev, who has been at Dynamo since 2003, is believed to be keen on a big-money move this summer - and could be using the Europa League to state his case.

But perhaps one of City's biggest fears will be the conditions on the night of the first leg. The famous 12th man for the Bilo-Syni (White-Blues) is not the 16,000 baying Ukrainians packed into the compact Valeriy Lobanovskiy - but the temperature, which will be at least five below zero when Thursday's game kicks off. The mercury level will be a shock even to England goalkeeper Joe Hart, let alone the snood-wearing Argentine Carlos Tevez.

Roma might not be the first top-flight Italian club to have foreign owners but they will be by far the biggest, having resided in Serie A for all but one of the 78 years of their existence and having been the champions on three occasions, most recently in 2001.

Another Italian club, Vicenza, were under the control of ENIC, who own Tottenham Hotspur, between 1999 and 2005, and they spent some of that time in Serie A.

Former striker Vincenzo Montella has recently been put in charge of the Roma team. Photo: Getty

In recent years Roma have been the most prominent challenger to Inter Milan's supremacy in Serie A, finishing second during four of the last five seasons, but they have been in dire financial difficulty for over a decade.

At the end of last season, Roma owed various banks in the region of £340m, prompting the money men to demand their cash back rather than allow the club to live on the never-never.

Roma president Rosella Sensi, whose father Franco bought the club in 1993, effectively mortgaged the family petroleum company Italpetroli to the club's principal creditor UniCredit to clear the debts.

Since September, even though Italpetroli and the Sensi family still hold a controlling stake in Roma, it is UniCredit who calls the shots and they have been looking for a buyer, with the asking price believed to be around £127m.

Five potential buyers apparently came forward but the one that UniCredit chose to deal with was the American businessman Thomas Di Benedetto, a part owner of Fenway Sports Group, which is the parent company of the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool.

Di Benedetto has Italian origins and his ancestors came from Abruzzo, which, not surprisingly, he has been doing his best to stress in recent weeks.

"We will not be losing sight of the fact that we will act as custodians of this great team in the name of the citizens of Rome and all of the fans of Roma," said Di Benedetto.

But the response to the possibility of the stars-and-stripes being hoisted over the Stadio Olimpico has been very mixed.

A quick look around Roma fans' internet forums shows that after years of ridiculing English clubs for losing their identity under foreign owners, they are very aware that the boot is now on the other foot.

However, Sergio Rosi, the president of one of the biggest Roma supporters clubs, the Roma Club Testaccio, took a much more positive approach last month.

"If they bring money, let them come. The world changes and we can't go backward. They are not a group from the world of soccer but they have know-how," said Rosi, momentarily forgetting their potential new owner's Anfield connection.

"However, the Americans must understand one thing though: you can't buy only the team but you must also buy the image of Roma that we take around the world.

"We are a little sceptical, that's normal to be in the beginning, but I'm ready to attach the American flag to the club if the deal is confirmed."

What would any new owner make of the passion at the Stadio Olimpico? Photo: Getty

If, or more likely when, the deal does finally go through - and UniCredit chief executive Federico Ghizzoni said that it might be as much as a month before the sale is concluded - it will bring an end to a saga which dates back more than seven years.

Back in February 2004, then president Franco Sensi, who died in 2008, said that he was about to sell his stake to the Russian oil company Nafta Moskva.

With their debts then only about half of what they were last summer, Sensi claimed the Russians had offered £340m for the club.

However, negotiations broke down, unlike what had happened at Chelsea the year before, partly under public pressure not to let the club slip into foreign hands.

Once it became known that Sensi was looking for a foreign purchaser, Rome's mayor Walter Veltroni said: "I will do my best to make sure Roma remains for the Romans."

At least one thing at Roma that looks like remaining Italian for a little longer is the coach.

Former Chelsea boss Claudio Ranieri resigned just over a week ago after four successive losses and in came former Italian international striker Vincenzo Montella, a Roma icon after spending a decade at the club, and Fulham fans may also remember him for his brief loan spell at Craven Cottage.

"He accepted the position with enthusiasm and determination. I don't think he will limit himself to just riding out the season quietly but aims to transmit his mentality to the lads," said Sensi.

Montella did just that and engineered a winning start with a 1-0 win at Bologna last Wednesday, and followed it with a 2-2 draw at home to Parma at the weekend, a pair of results which saw Roma rise to sixth place and kept them in contention for European football next season.

But the rumours continue to persist in the Italian media that Montella is still just a caretaker coach and Chelsea's Carlo Ancelotti will be at the helm of Roma for the start of next season.