Former Real Madrid star and club legend Cristiano Ronaldo talked to France Football and explained why he decided to leave the Spanish capital to join Juventus after nine successful years with Madrid.
Reports suggested that Ronaldo was in fact disappointed and wanted to get a new deal with the club. Perez didn’t want to offer this new contract.
“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,” he said. “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,” said Ronaldo.
“Th at’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,” he added.
Ronaldo also said that he didn’t make this decision because of Zidane’s departure from the club right after winning the Champions League.