Real 'folly' figures for Denilson

So confident are they, that the player is on a 10-year contract with a clause saying that if any club wishes to buy him they will have to pay $430m (around #270m).

Denilson is undoubtedly a player of promise. But apart from questioning whether any player, or person, should be the subject of such enormous sums being spent, this deal seems as much about a president with a big bank balance trying to put a middling sized club amongst the big boys, as it is about the player. None the less the spending puts Rangers outlay of #15m on seven new players into something of a warped perspective.

Of course, neither of the Old Firm were apparently interested in the player. Had they been a swop deal could have been arranged. Perhaps Craig Moore for Denilson. Or more realistically, Moore, plus Laudrup, Gascoigne, Thern, Amaruso and Negri.

To help them raise the cash if they wanted to buy him from Betis, they could always ask the new Scottish Parliament when it arrives to put up income tax by almost tuppence for a year to raise the #270m required.

However, Betis have already arranged a deal, and one they are happy with even though they do not get to see the player until next season. Sao Paulo have insisted that he stays there until after the World Cup in France. ''We worked hard to get him, but now we can give all the Betis fans something to celebrate,'' Betis president Manuel Ruiz de Lopera told the daily El Pais

The inordinate sum Betis will dish out for the left-footed winger, surpasses the $27m Inter Milan gave Brazilian ace Ronaldo to buy himself out of his eight-year contract with Barcelona.

It does not seem like 20 years since SV Hamburg paid #500,000 for the curls of Kevin Keegan, or even 15 since Trevor Francis became Britain's first #1m player. The amounts paid then were condemned as 'obscene' now they seem like bargains.

Even then people said that such prices could not last, and it seems the same comment is begged now. As institutional investors in clubs like Manchester United and Newcastle have curbed spending and complained about wages, it seems that some limit is likely to be placed by the market.

Betis's backers have not got to that conclusion however. Since Real Betis, hardly the most famous of Spanish teams, raised the money for such an ambitious deal, is almost as interesting as the transfer itself.

The club president and owner Manuel Ruiz de Lopera, is a millionaire - in pounds as well as pesetas - who made his money in property. He has been known to sign personal cheques for players, but on this occasion he did not have to.

De Lopera has won control of the television rights for his club's matches, and has just concluded a five year, exclusive agreement with a Spanish broadcaster which has largely paid for the signing of Denilson.

The matter of clubs selling their own television rights, and matches not being available on terrestrial television has become a matter of political debate in Spain, with parliamentary pressure put on broadcasters, and club, in an attempt to preserve the status quo.

Now that other clubs have seen the outrageous transfers which are possible because of television money, however obscene, or risky they might seem, it is unlikely that they, or the Spanish public will want to go back.

The Scottish public would probably enjoy exactly the same sort of deal, but of course, at the moment none of our clubs can negotiate the kind of broadcasting agreement which could fund it.

While we guffaw and splutter at the size of Denilson's contract, our clubs decide that Rangers beaming their away matches back to Ibrox would have a detrimental effect on the game, even though a number of clubs would receive more revenue.

On one level we can look at Real Betis's ambitious and expensive moves and see them as excessive, possibly as folly. It could never happen here. Whatever our clubs would do with money like that, the means of raising it could be repeated here. More than one football chairman could feel a million dollars, without being Vinnie Jones.