How Cristiano Ronaldo will decide Griezmann’s future

Ben Jacobs

• Updated: 26 Jul 2022 09:22 BST
• 3 min read

Atletico Madrid would need to offload Antoine Griezmann if they were to have any chance of signing Cristiano Ronaldo this summer, CBS reporter Ben Jacobs writes for FootballTransfers.

With Atletico, the challenge is going to be selling and Griezmann is one of the players who is being spoken about as an outgoing that may be a necessity if Atletico are to afford a deal for Ronaldo. And that’s even with Ronaldo taking something in the region of a 30 per cent pay cut.

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Sell Griezmann, Sign Ronaldo?

But there’s mixed reports on this at the moment because the news came out that Griezmann might be leveraged in order to get Ronaldo in, and yet by the same token that is problematic because he’s on a loan deal at Atletico from Barcelona and there’s an obligation to buy.

So Atletico would have a very complicated negotiation to offset their existing commitment to Griezmann against a potential future sale. And they would have to get ample amounts of finances off that in order to facilitate and afford anything on Ronaldo.

Griezmann is 31 and at the end of June the expectation within Spain and Madrid, and amongst sources close to the club, was that Griezmann would stay.

Griezmann U-turn?

So if he is to be offloaded as part of any swoop to bring Ronaldo in, it would very much be a u-turn.

Griezmann is on a two-year loan from Barcelona which will become an obligatory purchase if he plays a set amount of games.

So Atletico Madrid can either stick with Griezmann and then have that obligation or they can twist with Ronaldo and replace a 31-year-old with a 37-year-old who has equally high financial obligations, with the wage bill and potentially a transfer fee also.

I don’t think Atletico have made any firm decision on Griezmann’s future by Atletico on what they want to do with him.

And even if Atletico did offload Griezmann, they would still probably need one more sale before they had a clear run financially-speaking at Ronaldo. And the Ronaldo situation is not advanced enough to be putting Griezmann out there.