Ring the bells! Sound the trumpets! Add acute accents to all the vowels in any social media presence you might maintain. For Ángel Di María has passed his medical, made a series of Xs on a series of dotted lines, and is now a Manchester United player.
BREAKING: Angel Di Maria has completed his move to #mufc for a British record fee of £59.7m. #WelcomeDiMaria pic.twitter.com/ySiDmJM0gD
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) August 26, 2014
The details. At a reported fee of £59.7m, Di María becomes English football's record signing. He is reported to have signed a 5-year deal at Old Trafford, and his wages are reckoned to be £wehavenoideabutit'salot. He will take the No. 7 shirt, following in the illustrious footsteps of Michael Owen and some other jokers. Assuming that the formalities are formalised in time, he should be in line to make his debut against Burnley this coming Saturday lunchtime.
Following the in the footsteps of Luke Shaw, Ander Herrera and Marcos Rojo, Di María becomes United's fourth signing of the summer. And if the papers are to be believed, one or two more may follow. United's spending has therefore gone from "quite silly" to "oh wow", and may reach "dude, that's obscene" before the window creaks closed.
There are questions, of course — where is he going to play? why isn't he a centreback? isn't it terrible that so much of the money generated by a football club is being spent on a footballer rather than interest payments? — but fundamentally, here is what has happened. Manchester United have signed one of the best footballers around. You have tBB's permission to get excited.