Five and a bit years ago, Roman Abramovich was sitting in the VIP lounge at the Bayern Munich stadium with his eyes glued to a small TV set. The place was packed with eminent football personalities chatting noisily, but Chelsea's Russian billionaire owner was engrossed, oblivious to the hubbub, like a child watching his favourite cartoons.

His eyes were fixed on a succession of images of goals and spectacular pieces of play by Real Madrid's 'galacticos', Zidane, Ronaldo, Figo, Beckham, Roberto Carlos. In the room also was Florentino Perez, then president of Real Madrid. The occasion was a Champions League game, about to start, between Bayern and Real. Perez caught sight of the mesmerised Russian and, turning to his companions, cried out - half jokingly, half in genuine alarm - "Turn the TV off! Don't let him see that!"

Perez's concern was that Abramovich, with his bottomless pockets, would seek to filch his star players.

As it turned out, he didn't. Yet Real Madrid, having been poised at that moment to win it all, had a calamitous end of season, and ended up with nothing.

Chelsea went on to win the Premier League for the next couple of years and Real went from bad to worse, forcing Perez to resign.

Now Perez is back, returned by acclamation last month to the Real presidency, and it feels as if he's never been away.

He has continued where he left off in the business of grabbing galacticos, this week's acquisition of Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka for a combined total of £140million marking the spectacular start of a summer spending fest that has not ended yet.

Meanwhile, Abramovich keeps dreaming that one day he'll be able to construct a Chelsea team in the all-singing, all-dancing style of that glamorous Real side that made him drool in Munich all those years ago.

In this sense, Abramovich is more Spanish than English. The English game prizes winning above all. For the Spanish, at any rate for the big teams, what they call "espectaculo" is at least as important. They want to play football that is celebrated and admired. And that is what Abramovich wants his Chelsea to do too. The Russian has judged that lifting trophies with muscular efficiency is not enough; that to earn a place in history you need to play the beautiful game beautifully.

And for that you need beautiful players. He might have got them, too, this summer, had the ambitious, canny Perez - the father of all galacticos - not exploded onto the football scene again.

He'd have liked Kaka, the most elegant player in world football today, but the Brazilian opted for Real. Manchester United would have liked to keep Ronaldo, but he preferred the siren song of Real too.

Chelsea's best shot for now appears to be a move for Atletico Madrid's talented but unreliable Argentine striker Sergio Aguero, if they can prise him away. Abramovich is said to be offering £45m for him. But Real Madrid would not bid a third of that for the player. Nor would Barcelona.

The inability of Chelsea or England's other big sugar-daddy club, Manchester City, to compete with the Spanish for the absolute top talent in the game has a bearing on the Premier League as a whole.

It means that in the coming season the centre of gravity of the global game will drift from England to Spain. That is where the interest will lie; that is where, no matter where the trophies end up, the greater fun will be had.

Finally, we can back a Brit with pride

For those of us Brits who have been living abroad for some time few spectacles have been more embarrassing or ludicrous than the one offered by our compatriots every summer as Wimbledon draws near.

I refer to the sadly unrealistic hopes of victory pinned down the years on the hapless shoulders, elbows and wrists of Tim Henman and that Canadian bloke whose name escapes me now. It has therefore been a joy and a relief to witness the emergence of Andy Murray these last 12 months as a genuine contender for the Wimbledon men's singles crown.

He may never have as good a chance as he'll have this time around. First, because you never quite know what bright new talent might emerge as a contender between now and next June. Robin Soderling, the Swedish hard man who beat Rafael Nadal in the French Open, has to be a worry. The same goes for Murray's conqueror in Paris, the ferocious Fernando Gonzalez.

But the more important reason why Murray has to seize his chance now is that the tennis game's two Alpha Males, Nadal and Roger Federer, may each be lacking that tourniquet-tight mental strength required of any successful athlete competing for the top prize — the former battling injury and the latter succumbing to fatigue.

Thus it is with joy and relief, I repeat, that when the Wimbledon tournament begins in 10 days' time Brits everywhere can share in the unembarrassed belief that for the first time since 1936 that handsome gold cup may finally, really be coming home.

This week's reason to be cheerful . . .

A cartoon in a Spanish newspaper shows a frazzled male rising with difficulty out of a couch, in front of which is a TV set. His wife, watching on, observes, “He emerges, ergo the football season is over.” For those of us who are that man on the couch, the football-dry summer looms ahead like a long desert crossing. Amid such barrenness, what can life possibly offer? Sure, the chance exists to make some interesting domestic discoveries. The wife's dyed her hair; the baby's learnt to walk; grandma's died. The trouble with these family re-encounters is they can be dangerously stressful. One of the benefits of watching football is that you avoid spending too much time with the family. It is a fact that the greatest number of marital break-ups occur in the summer, when couples spend the most time in each other's company. That's why football is such a marital blessing. Just as well, then, for the crumbs of comfort offered by the summer transfer sagas. They give us something to think about while the spouse is talking.