Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and the bottomless pit of money

Certain sources speak of the great admiration that Nasser Al-Khelaïfi has for the Portuguese, and would be willing to fight UEFA sanctions should a deal be reached. In fact, he apparently travelled especially to Sochi to see Spain vs Portugal just to speak to him.

In contrast, others completely deny the accusation that the trip was only to speak to Ronaldo, and that all his attention is focussed on retaining Neymar's services as the main man for his club's project going forward.

There is also a possibility that the clubs could get the best of both worlds and arrange a swap deal for the two stars. This outcome would satisfy both players as it would give them a new challenge and an opportunity to increase their profiles even further.

But in reality, it would take a huge amount of working on the financial aspect of the deal, but not even getting over that hurdle would make this an easy deal to execute.

Nevertheless, the soap opera has only just started and there will be many more installments in this particular sporting Cold War between Real Madrid and Paris Saint Germain.