The transfer of Ajax striker Klaas-Jan Huntelaar to top Spanish club Real Madrid for €27m is big news.

More interesting though is the fact that the Dutch goal-getter will become the sixth Dutch player in the Real Madrid squad.
It is a massive compliment for Dutch football that one of the biggest and most successful football clubs in the world believes so strongly in the quality of Dutch players.
But it could also just be a quirk of Real Madrid’s current manager, the German Bernd Schuster, who has brought most of the Dutch players to the club.
The Huntelaar transfer was done in haste as he is needed to replace another Dutchman, Ruud van Nistelrooy, whose knee injury has ruled him out for the rest of the season.
Schuster is under tremendous pressure as his team is performing poorly and only just managed to progress to the knock-out round of the European Champions League. One newspaper joked today that Schuster could be on his way out before Huntelaar even arrives at the beginning of January.
But one wonders what effect such a big Dutch contingent will have on the rest of the Real Madrid squad. Will they form a Dutch-speaking clique in the dressing room?
Louis van Gaal also bought a cart-load of Dutch players to Barcelona in 1997. And that experiment ended in tears.
It is also yet to be seen whether Huntelaar can raise the level of his game to the dizzy heights expected by the Real Madrid fans.