THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO’S RUINED MANSION SHE’S SAID TO HAVE BOUGHT
and son have since been reconciled. ‘Madonna has always been a strict mother and it’s her way or the high way,’ says the source.
‘When Rocco publicly denounced her, she was devastated. It caused a rift which has been healed but it caused Madonna to rethink her parenting techniques. It used to be tough love but now it’s just love. This latest incarnation is a devoted mum who puts her children first.
‘Rebel Madonna has long since gone. She has totally embraced the idea of being a soccer mom.’
Madonna certainly seems proud of her new identity, posting a picture of herself in a baggy black sweatshirt on Instagram with the word ‘Bitch’ written across the image. Underneath she wrote: ‘Because sometimes soccer Moms need to be a...’
Madonna has six children, including the recently adopted four-yearold twins Stella and Esther, who are also from Malawi.
Determined not to repeat her mistake and risk alienating David, she has thrown herself enthusiastically behind the boy’s burgeoning career. Her Instagram account is filled with proud postings about his footballing prowess and includes her wearing a Benfica shirt.
Last week she showed off a picture of David with his teammates from Downtown United Soccer Club, the New York under-14s team he plays for at the moment, with the proclamation: ‘D.U.S.C wins 54! David Banda scores the winning goal!’ An earlier post showing David in his kit is accompanied by the message: ‘My Champion!’
Eldest daughter Lourdes, 20, is not expected to make the move to Portugal and will remain in America where she is pursuing a modelling career as the face of Stella McCartney’s fragrance Pop while studying musical theatre.
But the rest of Madonna’s brood – 11-year-old daughter Mercy James, David and the newly adopted twins – are expected to move to Lisbon this summer. Madonna plans to smooth their transition by enrolling them in the French Lycée school in Lisbon (Portuguese is mandatory), a sister institution to the Lycée in Manhattan where the children study at the moment, and the London Lycée, where Lourdes was once a pupil.
The superstar viewed a number of properties in Lisbon, where the local government has made a deliberate policy of attracting wealthy incomers through a low-tax regime and a policy known as ‘visa gold’, which grants automatic residency to non-Europeans who spend more than €570,000 on property.
Fans of the city compare it to San Francisco thanks to its steep hills, quaint trams, hilltop homes with spectacular views, burgeoning restaurant scene and thriving arts culture. Property expert Gustavo Soares, of Sotheby’s International Realty, one of the companies used by Madonna, says: ‘To have Madonna looking for properties in Lisbon isn’t just a cool thing, it’s helping to drive up property prices in the city and elsewhere.’
The star is already immersing herself in Lisbon society. Last month, she met Fernando Medina, the city’s mayor, and had dinner at the Michelin-starred Solar dos Nunes restaurant with former Portuguese international footballer Nuno Gomes, who runs the Benfica training scheme which David will join.
She is even rumoured to be dating a Portuguese male model, Kevin Sampaio, 27 years her junior.
Naturally, for a woman with an estimated €570m fortune, money is no object when it comes to choosing new digs. It is reported that last week she completed the €5.7m purchase of Quinta do Relogio (Farm of the Clock Tower) in Sintra, a fourstorey palace complete with private chapel and sprawling park filled with a lake and grotto.
It is rich in history. Part of a world heritage site, the palace was built by the 15th Count of Redondo in the Moorish Revival style and was considered one of Portugal’s finest palaces until it fell into disrepair.
‘It needs major restoration work,’ a local estate agent said. ‘It needs someone with unlimited funds to restore it. And now it has that.’
A centuries-old cork tree guards the entrance to the palace, above which is carved the motto: ‘God Is The Only Winner.’
In 1835, it was bought by Portuguese nobleman Manuel Pinto de Fonseca, who made a fortune in the Brazilian slave trade.
It was Fonseca’s controversial life that inspired Alexandre Dumas to write a fictionalised account of a man wrongly accused of a crime, who then makes a fortune and returns home to seek revenge.
Wonderful as her new palace sounds, Hollywood sources say that Madonna still intends to keep her €35m townhouse on New York’s Upper East Side fully staffed. But they insist that she relishes the idea of living in Europe – and, of course, being closer to Rocco in England.
The teenager was recently arrested for marijuana possession and his mother is said to have concerns about some of his friends.
As Rocco’s father Guy has put it: ‘If you live in one of the busiest cities in the world, there is an endless deluge of opportunities and temptations.
‘Everyone has to go on their own journey to navigate their way past that gauntlet.’
No wonder that, for the moment at least, Hollywood’s newest soccer mom is keeping a very close eye from the sidelines.
‘There used to be tough love – now it’s just love’