The evening before Real Madrid kicked off against Zaragoza last week, Jose Mourinho told the world press - "Kaka will start on the bench. He counts for me and I will be glad to have a player of his quality by my side. Ozil will be the starter." They seem like reassuring words at first glance, but the implications of that statement ran deep. They implied failure by Kaka to live up to the standards that he so easily carried before. After a full vacation's rest, an injury-free preseason, and a lot of huffing and puffing, the Kaka that appeared as a substitute in the Supercup still looked grey. Impotent, toothless even.

On the other hand, Pardhi posted an article today about how Ozil may well be the next Zidane, a role everybody - including Florentino Perez - expected Kaka to fill. There's little doubt that the fleet-footed German has far eclipsed his predecessor who has struggled with injuries, national team commitments, and just plain bad luck in his just-over-2-years in the capital.

Well, that's football - s$%t happens, and then you move on. The same thing happened to Fernando Gago. He never really 'blew' any chances with Mou - he was just injured so much that there seemed no more benefit in keeping him around. This begs the question - why is Kaka around?

Relax, I still love him and am not asking for him to be sold (yet), but go with me here. Here is a player who we paid 65 million euros for. Not only that, he is a player who  (judging solely from his 40 appearances in 2 years with RM against his history with Milan) seems to be on the decline. Not only that, he is clearly 2nd in the pecking order and earning a mindboggling 9 million euros a year. That's a third more than the salary of Iker Casillas. You might argue that even still, Kaka holds great marketing value - and that's true. When we played in China this August, Kaka got a standing ovation, more for his legacy than his performance, reported AS. Even then, more and more of those Kaka-8 canarinha jerseys are being replaced by another number 8- that of Germany's Mesut Ozil.

So with the way things are going, how long will it be feasible to keep him on his gigantic payroll? Remember how fast people jumped off the Ronaldinho bandwagon once he was past it? And with Luiz Ronaldo. On the flip side, hypotetically, selling him for even 30m now to Chelsea would save us a further 30 million euros in his salary - and financially we'd have a clean slate.

Does this mean I want Kaka to be sold? Shucks no. I love him and his personality to bits. Even the sporting side of him showed a glimmer of hope last game when he rifled one into Roberto's top corner as a substitute. However, a player of Kaka's calibre and situation cannot be a benchwarmer for long. It will reach a point when even Florentino's going to say sod it, ya no vale la pena and pick up the phone to dial Abramovich and Roberto Mancini. Kaka needs to get his act together - and fast, because the clock is ticking.