Chelsea eye Real duo

Real sporting director Jorge Valdano said "nothing has changed" since club president Florentino Perez backed Beckham in a meeting two weeks ago.

Valdano said: "Real Madrid prefer to distance themselves from all this talk.

"Beckham has a five-year contract and there is a buy-out clause [180m euros] that anybody interested must pay."

The buy-out figure, which equates to �126m, is thought to be too much even for Chelsea to pay.

And the view that Beckham will stay in Madrid is backed up by comments from the midfielder's personal assistant Terry Byrne.

He told The People newspaper: "Unless Real want to sell him, he's staying. The truth is, we don't know where the stories about him leaving are coming from, but it's not us.

"Real told me they don't want to sell him.

"The situation remains the same because we always said we would review the situation after two years and he hasn't even finished his first season.

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"Obviously we have talked about what would happen if he came home but there are only a few clubs he could go to.

"We will sit down with Real at the end of the season and discuss his future, but the bottom line is that David loves playing for Real Madrid."

The Observer adds that Madrid may attempt to offload Ronaldo rather than Beckham in order to finance bids for Roma's Francesco Totti and Manchester United's Ruud van Nistelrooy in the summer.

Ronaldo has a buy-out figure of 180m euros and Valdano told the Observer, "To us Ronaldo has a huge strategic importance - but so does 180 million."