Real Madrid will present Jose Mourinho as its coach Monday after agreeing an undisclosed compensation deal with Inter Milan, the Spanish club said Friday. The two club presidents met in Milan to thrash out details of the package that will free Mourinho to leave Inter and join the nine-times European champions after a treble-winning season in Italy. Inter gave no details of the deal between its president Massimo Moratti and his Real counterpart Florentino Perez but Spanish and Italian media reported that Inter would receive eight million euros ($9.80 million). Mourinho led Inter to three trophies last season, culminating in their Champions League final victory over Bayern Munich at Real's Bernabeu Stadium. Real turned to him after sacking Manuel Pellegrini this week following a season with no trophies for a team that had 250 million euros spent on it last summer. “We are convinced that we need a fresh impulse and we are convinced that Jose Mourinho is the right person to take on the job,” Perez said at the time. The move for Mourinho marks a change in direction for Perez, who has preferred to invest money in the world's best players rather than high-profile coaches in the past. “(We looked to Mourinho) for his prestige, for the personality he has, for his great ability to absorb the pressure and for the leadership Madrid needs,” Perez's right-hand man Jorge Valdano said in a radio interview earlier Friday. “We lacked a strong man in a moment of transition like this.” FIFA drops probe FIFA said Friday that former England Football Association (FA) chairman Lord Triesman had denied making claims about rival bidders in the 2018 World Cup. Triesman was secretly recorded by an English newspaper alleging to a former aide that Spain could drop its 2018 World Cup bid if rival bidder Russia helped bribe referees at this year's World Cup. But world football's governing body FIFA said that its investigation into the affair had found no basis to the bribery claims. “In his letter to FIFA, Lord Triesman explained that this speculation was not an allegation on his part but was reported to him in a private capacity and was not known by either The Football Association or the England 2018 FIFA World Cup Bid Committee,” said FIFA in a statement. Triesman had to resign his position as FA chairman and as head of England's 2018 World Cup bid team amid fears his claims would damage England's chances of hosting the 2018 World Cup. But responding to FIFA's queries, Triesman and the Football Association explained that he was commenting on speculation that was circulating among journalists in Europe when he was taped without his knowledge.
