After agreeing to mutually terminate his contract with Man United, Cristiano Ronaldo become arguably football’s highest-profile free agent, ever.
The Portugal superstar, who represented his country during the 2022 winter World Cup in Qatar, spent just a few weeks without a club before eventually agreeing to join Saudi club Al-Nassr.
The former Real Madrid Galactico’s choice of clubs surprised some fans, especially following months of speculation that the five-time Ballon d’Or winner would only look to join a club competing in the UEFA Champions League.
However, according to journalist Ben Jacobs, who spoke exclusively to CaughtOffside, Ronaldo’s Middle East move wasn’t down to European clubs not wanting him – but more so the 37-year-old being selective about his next destination.
“Jorge Mendes worked extremely hard to find Cristiano Ronaldo options,” Jacobs told CaughtOffside on SubStack.
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“He spoke to almost every Champions League club to try to find a deal. It’s important to be clear here that it’s not that Ronaldo was rejected by all these teams, it’s just a difficult deal to do for a variety of reasons.
There were a handful of clubs Ronaldo wanted to move to, but even with a 30% pay cut, which he was willing to accept, his wages are still expensive for most teams, and then there’s his age and how to fit him in the team and the dressing room. It’s not easy. It’s not the case that a string of European clubs didn’t want Ronaldo, there were many who would’ve loved to sign Ronaldo but just couldn’t afford him, and there were some who would’ve loved Ronaldo but he didn’t fancy the move. There were options to some degree, but nothing concrete.”
Going on to explain how Italian side Napoli were interested in bringing Ronaldo to the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium, Jacobs noted that a deal failed to materialise because the iconic number seven wasn’t ‘keen’.
[…] There was a meeting between Jorge Mendes and Napoli, but Ronaldo wasn’t ever keen on that move,” Jacobs added.
“When you consider that, it’s clear Ronaldo was quite selective about who he wanted to join.
“In the end, the move to Al Nassr came about for a variety of reasons. Saudi Arabia have a vision of using sport to promote a healthy lifestyle, tourism, and growing the Saudi league. That’s really important, because once you buy into that vision, you get backing, so Al Nassr were able to sign Cristiano Ronaldo because they got partners and financial backers to help with the move – just 40% of the deal came from Al Nassr themselves. They were able to get the deal done because of various financial sponsors.”