Robinho, the most expensive player in English football, has confirmed that he wants to leave Manchester City and blamed Roberto Mancini, and formerly Mark Hughes, for making his time in the Premier League so unhappy.
A delegation from Santos, Robinho's former club in Brazil, is due to meet City officials in Manchester this week and several other clubs, led by Benfica, have registered an official interest in the former Real Madrid player.
Robinho's advisers have tried to persuade Barcelona to try to arrange a loan deal but the initial talks have not been followed up and the player has now decided that he wants to return to Brazil to rejoin the club where he began his career.
"The whole board of directors [at City] has decided that the best thing is to loan me out," Robinho said. "It would be extraordinary to come back to Santos. Playing for Santos would help pave my way to the World Cup. It's my home, where I know everyone."
Robinho's desire to leave Manchester was first revealed in the Guardian in November and, despite strong denials from his club at the time, it has now become apparent to the City hierarchy that he has failed to embrace life in England and has begun to feel disillusioned in the extreme.
After a promising start the Brazilian's form has deteriorated sharply, culminating in him losing his place in the team since Mancini took over from Mark Hughes. He was brought on as a substitute during City's recent 2-0 defeat at Everton only to be brought off later in the game because Mancini was so unimpressed.
"The first thing to say is that it is a bad moment I am going through," Robinho told Rádio Bandeirantes in Brazil. "The managers are different here. They decide a system and want you to fit in and it doesn't matter if you're tall or short. The manager was honest with me. He told me I was just going to play every other game. I told him that wouldn't interest me because this is a World Cup year and I need to play."
His impending move will represent a major setback to City given that Robinho's transfer from Madrid on the day the Abu Dhabi United group took control at Eastlands was supposed to signify the club's new ambitions. Instead, he has flickered only sporadically in his 16 months in England and is now so desperate to leave he has even informed City that he will waive part of his £160,000-a-week salary. "The financial situation is important but being happy also counts," he explained.
Santos will still have considerable problems raising the money for the deal to go through but the club intend to offer City the first refusal on their two most exciting young players, Neymar and Paulo Henrique Ganso.
"I don't know if the deal is possible but if there is the slightest of chances to bring him back we will look at every option to do that," the club's president, Luis Alvaro De Oliveira Ribeiro, said. "If Corinthians can find a way to bring back Ronaldo then we can do the same with Robinho."
Robinho's time in England now seems destined to be remembered as a failure and it is a measure of how far his stock has fallen that he was named in the side to face Scunthorpe United at Glanford Park today only because Mancini wanted to rest other players ahead of the second leg of the Carling Cup semi-final against Manchester United on Wednesday.
"We hope Santos can persuade Manchester to do a deal," said Evandro Souza, one of the player's advisers. "Myself and Robinho's father are in Manchester to try to arrange the deal and we expect we could be here until the end of the transfer window."
In addition to the interest from Benfica, Robinho revealed he had spoken to his former Santos team-mate Diego, now a Juventus player, about the possibility of a move to the Turin club.
"He invited me to be happy with him at Juventus," Robinho said. "I told him: 'Di, I think it's better for me to go to Peixe [Santos's nickname] and go back to Brazil."
