Rivaldo makes move to AC Milan
Brazilian World Cup winning striker Rivaldo has signed for Serie A club AC Milan, the Italian club said on Saturday.
Rivaldo, who became a free agent after his contract with Spanish club Barcelona was cancelled last week, has agreed a three-year deal with Milan, the club said on its official website.
As Rivaldo was without a club, Milan did not have to pay a transfer fee and although there was no immediate comment on the package offered to the 30-year-old forward, Italian media reports had claimed the player would be paid around 4.5 million euro ($4.45 million) per season.
Rivaldo told reporters in Sao Paulo that he was looking forward to facing his Brazil team mate Ronaldo, who plays for AC Milan's arch-rivals Inter, in the Milan derby.
"I'm already keen about this idea of playing against Ronaldo," he said.
"It will be very interesting. He's my friend, as we showed in the World Cup, but now we are playing for different sides. I think the first game between Milan and Inter will be one of the big attractions of the Italian championship."
"I'm very happy to have reached an agreement with Milan," he added. "It's a club which recognises me as a world champion."
The deal was completed after almost a week of intensive negotiations in Brazil between Milan and Rivaldo's management team but Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani said the player had been keen on a move to the San Siro throughout the talks.
"In every telephone call we have had in these past days the player has repeated the same phrase -- 'I want to come to Milan, I want to come to Milan'," Galliani told the club's television station Milan Channel.
"That kept our hopes up and in the desires of the player there was never a real alternative to Milan," added Galliani.
FINANCIAL PROBLEMS
Milan said Rivaldo would join his new team mates for pre-season training on August 1.
Italian football has been dogged by financial problems throughout the close season with few major transfers taking place as clubs look to balance their books rather than recruit expensive new talent.
But the Rivaldo signing will have eased the gloom -- at least for Milan supporters.
The deal is one of the biggest transfer coups Milan have pulled off for some years -- in the 1980s when the club dominated Italian and European football, free-spending president Silvio Berlusconi brought in top internationals such as Dutchmen Marco Van Basten and Ruud Gullit.
The club has not won a major trophy in the past three seasons, however, and they are desperate to mount a strong challenge in the Champions League.
Last season Berlusconi, now Italy's prime minister, spent heavily to bring in Portugal's Manuel Rui Costa and Italian striker Filippo Inzaghi.
But the side was never in the Serie A title race and had to be content with fourth place which at least gave them a place in the Champions League qualifying round.
Rivaldo is Milan's third major acquisition of the close-season following the signing of Danish striker Jon Dahl Tomasson from Feyenoord and Dutch midfielder Clarence Seedorf from Inter.
Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti now has an impressive range of strikers with Inzaghi, Ukrainian Andriy Shevchenko, Tomasson and Rivaldo to choose from, as well as attacking midfielder Rui Costa.
