Ronaldinho used Manchester City

British tabloid The Sun claims that Barcelona playmaker Ronaldinho (28) has revealed to team mates earlier this week that he would prefer to move to the English Premier League, giving Manchester City renewed hopes to sign the Brazilian this summer. The club would be ready to offer Ronaldinho a salary of 12,5 million euro° a year and an interesting image rights deal, something the club wants to compensate by huge commercial spin-offs.

British tabloid The Daily Mail claimed yesterday that Manchester City was already offered Ronaldinho back in January, when Manchester City president Thaksin Sinawatra was alerted to the player's availability. Manchester City manager Sven-Göran Eriksson doesn't believe the transfer is possible and would be privately hoping the interest of his president in the Brazilian fades away.

British newspaper The Guardian suggested that the Manchester City president has been naive in the whole case and that Roberto de Assís, brother and agent of Ronaldinho, has used Manchester City to alert other potential buyers and to push up the price. Manchester City manager Eriksson thinks that Chelsea was one of the real targets: "After last weekend's game I met Roberto and do you know where? He was outside the dressing room of Chelsea. What he was doing there I don't know."

Thaksin Shinawatra would nevertheless still believe that there's a good chance Ronaldinho will accept his club's offer, but Eriksson did not put him on his transfer wish list: "I have a crystal clear idea of who I want. I know that one target for the owner, and rightly so, is to fill the stadium for every match. One way to do that is to fight higher up the league. Another is to buy a big, big, big star. Ronaldinho was the number 1 player in the world two years ago and he is still a very good player. If you asked any manager in the world about him, you would get the same answer every time. But it's just unlikely he wants to swap Barcelona for us."

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