Just get on with it!

Can someone explain to me just what is going on? I've been following the to-ings and fro-ings at the Bernabéu since they decided Capello should no longer be in charge of the team and am no wiser than I was a week ago.

Mijatovic, Capello's hitherto strongest supporter (supposedly) inside the club, announced his sacking by saying that he was not the most suitable person to take the club forward. It has been speculated that Mijatovic was being forced sideways by Calderón, who wanted the former Racing de Santander coach (Miguel Angel Portugal) to take over as the sporting director. Mijatovic is said to have forced the issue with Calderón and his price for not sticking with Capello and making things awkward at the club would be if Portugal's role did not interfere with his - well, at least that's what As said and you can bet the mortgage on their investigative journalism, right?.

However, Portugal had already signed a contract, and things went very quiet about his future for a week until last night, when he was officially announced as the new new technical secretary. His duties are unclear and there is confusion (at least from an outsider's perspective) as to whether he works for Mijatovic or alongside him. It may be that Mijatovic's days are also numbered...

Still, that's just politics. It's a shame Capello got caught in the middle of it, but that's life. You'd think that at the very least the club would be doing their utmost to kick-start the planning for next season with a replacement in the manager's job. Well, Bernd Schuster is in the middle of his very own saga.

It's understandable that Angel Torres, the president of "modest" Getafe is a little miffed that Real Madrid have been 'tapping up' his manager, who, after all, has a year left to run on his contract. He's entitled to compensation, all 480,000 euros of it, and all he asked for initially was just a courtesy call. The response from Calderón was emphatic: "Real Madrid does not buy out coaches' contracts. If a coach wants to come here, he needs to sort out his own contract. We're looking at other options. Yeah, right.

Why all the playing of games? It's perfectly normal for a club to buy out a player's contract, why not a coach's? So Bernd has to buy out his own contract or the club will find someone else. What exactly is going on behind the scenes? Yesterday, Calderón even accused Torres of "seeking protagonism", of wanting to become Real Madrid president himself. He's not just paranoid, he's insane. Check out Tim's take at La Liga Loca,and Linda's over at The Beautiful Game.

In the middle of all of this, the names linked to Real Madrid succeed each other with all the regularity of a bad case of the runs - Chivu, Cesc, Malouda, Kaká (yet again), Adriano, Robben, Pato, Drenthe. This is perfectly normal for this time of year, but if only a handful of them are true, just who is making the plans, who is building next year's squad, and using what criteria? Does Schuster know, does he care?

Can someone explain to me just what is going on?