Soccer: Real set to top 100m bid

Gareth Bale. Photo / AP

Real Madrid are ready to step up their world record bid for Gareth Bale, with his 100 million future transfer likely to be decided next week in Miami.

Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy will meet Real president Florentino Perez in the United States, with the Spanish giants prepared to pay more than 100m pounds to bring the Wales international to the Bernabeu. It is a figure Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger described yesterday as "completely crazy".

Perez will offer Bale a five-year contract worth a staggering 180,000 a week and Madrid are growing increasingly confident a deal can be agreed before the start of the La Liga season, possibly in the next week.

Tottenham manager Andre Villas-Boas is believed to be resigned to losing the Professional Footballers' Association Player of the Year and was preparing for last night's friendly against Monaco in France without Bale, who is struggling with a muscle problem. Bale stayed behind when the rest of his team-mates flew out yesterday afternoon. He has almost certainly played his last game for the club after telling Levy and Villas-Boas he wants to leave White Hart Lane after six years.

Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti has admitted talks are ongoing and that Perez is hopeful of thrashing out an agreement next week to complete a transfer that will smash the 80m paid by Barcelona to Manchester United for Cristiano Ronaldo.

Such a mammoth deal has polarised opinion and Wenger waded into the debate by declaring Real's relentless pursuit as "a joke" and one that made a mockery of the new era of financial fair play. Wenger is under pressure to use the 70m funds made available to him so far this summer but insisted he would spend only "in the right way" during the transfer window.

He said: "It makes a joke of them [the FFP rules]. It is quite amazing that in the year when the financial fair play comes in, the world has gone completely crazy. You wonder, what kind of impact and effect financial fair play will have on the football world because it looks like it has made everybody worse.

"It is never good to lose a big player, especially a British player, and I believe it is important the Premier League keeps its best players.

"If you say we're under pressure to spend money, yes we are. But I feel more under pressure to spend the money in the right way and that's what I'll try to do. We want to spend it if it strengthens our team. Just spending the money is not a quality.

"Spending the money, buying the right players, that is a quality, of course. If you can give me names who are better than the players we have, I am ready to talk."

The Arsenal manager said he remained confident of doing business before the transfer window closes on September 2.

Former Spurs manager Harry Redknapp was in charge when Bale won the PFA Player of the Year award for the first time in 2011 and believes the 24-year-old would flourish among the galacticos. Bale was not even a regular in the Spurs team when Redknapp arrived from Portsmouth, and Birmingham City and Nottingham Forest attempted to sign him for a fee minuscule in comparison to the figures now being bandied about.

But he has since emerged as one of the most coveted players in world football and looks likely to become the most expensive in history.

"He is behind Messi and Ronaldo in terms of being the best player in the world," said Redknapp, now manager at Queens Park Rangers. "He is at a good club but the opportunity to play for Real Madrid does not come along too often. He has probably dreamed about that since he was a little boy.

"It seems they have offered fantastic money so it could happen, but I don't know. I wouldn't be sure. If he goes there, he will be a great success there. I am sure of that.

"I think it'll be difficult for him not to go now. I think he wants to go, if we're truthful. He doesn't want to say it but I hear from different sources that he really wants to go now."