According to "The Independent", "as Steve McManaman was unveiled at a press conference at the Bernabeu stadium, a mile up the road Clarence Seedorf was explaining his part in a dressing-room altercation with Fernando Hierro...The Madrid newspapers had carried a word- by-word and blow-by-blow account of the spat that morning. Pitched unwittingly into the mayhem, McManaman must feel as if he has left the Spice Boys for Oasis." The club had appointed John Toshack as its new coach and had already been forced to sell key players like Predrag Mijatović, Davor Šuker and Christian Panucci due to mounting debt, while Seedorf was later released shortly after McManaman arrived.