The seven teams to reject Ronaldo this summer
FT Desk
- Updated: 17 Aug 2022 22:13 BST
- 3 min read
Cristiano Ronaldo has been rejected by seven major European teams this summer as he struggles to find himself a new club.
Ronaldo put in a transfer request at the beginning of July asking to be sold.
Related articles
The Portuguese superstar wants to join a club that is in the Champions League and can challenge for major trophies.
Premier League 2022/23 summer transfers: All the completed deals
Cristiano Ronaldo at Man Utd: Goals, assists, results & fixtures in 2022-23
His agent Jorge Mendes has offered him out to numerous clubs around Europe, without finding a taker yet.
The Corriere dello Sport reports that seven major teams have all been offered the chance to sign Ronaldo, but have turned down the chance.
Ronaldo can't find a club
Only one of these teams is from the Premier League in the form of Chelsea. Indeed, the club’s new owner Todd Boehly even sat down for talks with Mendes about possibly signing Ronaldo but decided against it after talks with Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel.
Just like Chelsea – who loaned out Romelu Lukaku - Bayern Munich have also been in the market to sign a striker this summer having sold Robert Lewandowski to Barcelona.
However, Bayern also rejected the chance to sign Ronaldo as he was deemed too old, expensive and ill-fitting to Julian Nagelsmann’s style of play.
In France, PSG immediately spurned the advances of Mendes as they have declared their intention to move away from the “bling-bling era” – robbing neutrals of the chance of seeing Ronaldo and long-term rival Lionel Messi together.
In Italy, both AC Milan and Inter immediately turned Ronaldo down, despite the veteran being very keen on a move to Serie A. Inter had already signed Lukaku as their striker, while Milan’s project is built around younger players.
Finally, in Spain, Real Madrid had no intention of bringing Ronaldo back to the Santiago Bernabeu. Cross-city rivals Atletico are the team who thought about Ronaldo the most, with manager Diego Simeone very much a fan of the striker. But until now, they have also refrained from making a concrete move.
