Real and United tackle Eastern promise

"Market research shows that many football fans across Asia will transfer their allegiance from club to club without a thought if their favourite star moves.

"In Europe, with a game which is well over a century old, we give our loyalty to clubs.

"But that is not the way it works in emerging markets and, as such, you could buy a fan's allegiance to your club and your merchandise if their favourite player moves to you."

Thus the Beckham strategy. His 10ft statue, sculpted from thousands of chocolate bars, has been shifted around different display sites in Tokyo since last summer and BP launched its Asian Pacific Castrol Oil campaign using Beckham's image last year.

Apparently, the company found that 80 per cent of consumers in Thailand, Vietnam and China said that a link with Beckham would be a reason to buy Castrol products.

"We cannot apply full business criteria to this process because we are a football club, not a simple shirtselling machine - but we can tap into this level of desire for particular stars," said Sanchez.

"In some parts of our marketing there is a very direct relationship between the stars we buy and our financial performance.

"The point is not only how many shirt sales we caused by buying Luis Figo, but how much we add to our brand value as well. There is a surge effect on the price of tickets, fees from digital broadcasters, sales of magazines and the impact of Figo coming was global.

"If you take Real Madrid 2003 compared to 2000 our budget has doubled and the share of the budget which is created by our marketing division has soared to 38 per cent.

"Manchester United have been the reference for us in Europe because they understood earlier than anyone that the industrial side of the game needed to be developed and that the club had to be a brand.

"Today, I think it might be different. I think there are three or four of us competing to be the biggest club force in global football marketing. But we still respect United."

Madrid's tactics have been, by any financial measure, extraordinarily successful. They estimate that, by next season, their debts will be clear, the budget will be stable and ordinary revenue streams will cover outgoings and leave a profit of £13.8 million.

Under commercial revolution started by Florentino Perez, Real president for the past three years, their turnover is £198m - roughly £15m more than United's.

Around 20 per cent of Real's income derives from ticket sales, 8 per cent from the Champions League and friendlies, 29 per cent from audiovisual rights and 38 per cent from marketing activities.

A tour of Asia earns about £7m, they have opened their first football academy in Beijing and in a couple of months the Real Madrid football channel will air in China and Japan.

Meanwhile United, who toured Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand before the start of last season, have a 10-year franchise deal to open at least 90 United-branded Reds cafes in the Far East.

And if Madrid's flirting with Beckham's merchandising value has been nothing more than a signal of what's to come then just wait for the battle royal when the first Chinese or Japanese player of sufficient quality to play for one of the two biggest clubs in the world goes under the hammer.

In the meantime, we will have to make do with Zinedine Zidane, Beckham, Ronaldo & Co battling for supremacy on the football pitch.