Agency :
Cristiano Ronaldo on Monday revealed that he left his former club Real Madrid because its president Florentino Perez saw him as a ‘business deal’ and the Portuguese felt that he was just a means of making money and was not wanted by the Spanish giants.
In an interview to France Football, Ronaldo slammed Perez and said, “He only ever looked at me as a business relationship. I know it. What he told me never came from the heart.”
Even though the three-time successive winners of Champions League had claimed that the Portugal captain’s transfer to Juventus is ‘at the will and the request of the player,’ Ronaldo said that he could feel it inside the club that he was no longer ‘indispensable’ to them. “I felt it inside the club, especially from the president, that they no longer considered me the same way that they did in the start. In the first four or five years there, I had the feeling of being ‘Cristiano Ronaldo’. Less afterwards. The president looked at me through eyes that didn’t want to say the same thing, as if I was no longer indispensable to them, if you know what I mean.”
“That’s what made me think about leaving. Sometimes I’d look at the news, where they were saying I was asking to leave. There was a bit of that, but the truth is that I always had the impression that the president would not hold me back. If it had all been about money, I’d have moved to China, where I would have earned five times as much than here (at Juventus) or at Real. I did not come to Juve for the money. I earned the same in Madrid, if not more. The difference is that, at Juve, they really wanted me. They told me that and made it clear. They showed me that.”
Asked whether then-coach Zinedine Zidane’s decision to leave had affected his decision, Ronaldo said: “My decision to leave was not based on his departure. That being the case, it’s one of those little things that made me feel a bit better in terms of what I thought of the situation at the club.”
Cristiano Ronaldo on Monday revealed that he left his former club Real Madrid because its president Florentino Perez saw him as a ‘business deal’ and the Portuguese felt that he was just a means of making money and was not wanted by the Spanish giants.
In an interview to France Football, Ronaldo slammed Perez and said, “He only ever looked at me as a business relationship. I know it. What he told me never came from the heart.”
Even though the three-time successive winners of Champions League had claimed that the Portugal captain’s transfer to Juventus is ‘at the will and the request of the player,’ Ronaldo said that he could feel it inside the club that he was no longer ‘indispensable’ to them. “I felt it inside the club, especially from the president, that they no longer considered me the same way that they did in the start. In the first four or five years there, I had the feeling of being ‘Cristiano Ronaldo’. Less afterwards. The president looked at me through eyes that didn’t want to say the same thing, as if I was no longer indispensable to them, if you know what I mean.”
“That’s what made me think about leaving. Sometimes I’d look at the news, where they were saying I was asking to leave. There was a bit of that, but the truth is that I always had the impression that the president would not hold me back. If it had all been about money, I’d have moved to China, where I would have earned five times as much than here (at Juventus) or at Real. I did not come to Juve for the money. I earned the same in Madrid, if not more. The difference is that, at Juve, they really wanted me. They told me that and made it clear. They showed me that.”
Asked whether then-coach Zinedine Zidane’s decision to leave had affected his decision, Ronaldo said: “My decision to leave was not based on his departure. That being the case, it’s one of those little things that made me feel a bit better in terms of what I thought of the situation at the club.”
Ronaldo has been accused of rape by Kathryn Mayorga, who claims that she was assualted by the football star in 2009 and was later paid to not pursue criminal charges. Inspired by the #MeToo movement, Mayorga went public on the alleged assault this September.
