Cristiano Ronaldo is under contract at Juventus until the summer of 2022 but is understood to be open to leaving the Serie A club before the current transfer window finishes; Juventus want at least £21.4m (€25m) for the 36-year-old who was brought to the club in 2018
Thursday 26 August 2021 14:31, UK
Manchester City have been offered the chance to sign Cristiano Ronaldo from Juventus.
Ronaldo is out of contract next summer and Juventus are open to sell him to save on the £500,000 a week wages they pay him plus tax.
Ronaldo is also open to leaving but the club would request any suitor to pay at least £21.4m (€25m).
The Juventus board have received no formal bid as of yet, and reiterated to Mendes in a meeting in Turin on Thursday that Ronaldo will not be allowed to leave if their asking price is not met.
City are interested in bringing Ronaldo back to the Premier League on a free transfer and are willing to offer him a two-year contract, with a salary of £12.8m-per-season (€15m), according to Sky in Italy.
City are happy with the business they have done this summer after signing Jack Grealish for £100m and Pep Guardiola would be happy to continue the season without any more signings.
He believes his squad is now even stronger than last season's champions, but City are still prepared to sign a forward after missing out on Harry Kane.
Ronaldo does not fit the profile of the player they are looking for, but they would consider signing him if the deal made sense from a sporting and financial perspective.
The 36-year-old, who scored 118 goals in 292 games for Manchester United between 2003 and 2009, has been linked with a move away from Turin this summer and is understood to be open to leaving, but Juventus expect him to stay.
Ronaldo has not directly communicated to the club that he wants to depart. His current contract at the Allianz Stadium runs until June 2022 and he is earning €31m per year after tax.
City are the only club currently interested in signing Ronaldo, with Paris Saint-Germain not in the picture.
Ronaldo's representatives are pushing for a move, while Juventus would like to sign Gabriel Jesus to be a part of the deal, but City do not want to sell the Brazil international forward.
Ronaldo was a surprise omission from the starting line-up in Juve's Serie A opener against Udinese and left training on Wednesday with an arm injury.
Sky in Italy's Gianluca Di Marzio:
"Jorge Mendes, Ronaldo's agent, has arrived in Turin to speak to Ronaldo. He has not yet met with Juve and there is no formal offer on the table for Juve yet.
"What we know is that Man City would like to have Cristiano for free. Cristiano would like to move so he and his agents are pushing Juventus and Man City to take this deal forward.
"Juventus would like to take Gabriel Jesus in any deal but Pep Guardiola doesn't want that to happen. But in the next few days we will know if there are the economical conditions to do this deal.
"At this moment, City are the only club who could do this deal; PSG at the moment are not so interested."
Sky Sports' Nick Wright:
Ronaldo turned 36 in February and was unable to prevent Juventus from slumping to a fourth-placed finish in Serie A last season but on an individual level his output remains exceptional.
True, his scoring feats are no longer at the level of his peak years at Real Madrid, when he regularly surpassed the 50-goal mark, but Ronaldo has netted 101 times in 134 games in all competitions for Juventus, an average of nearly 34 per season.
Ronaldo is not the explosive winger he once was. Instead, he has become a clinical, goal-poaching presence in the central striking role, where his aerial prowess is particularly dangerous.
Age has not blunted his goalscoring instincts and it doesn't seem to have made him any less robust either. Across his three full seasons in Turin, he has only missed 17 Serie A games out of 114. He remains ever-present for the Portuguese national team too.
The figures involved in any potential deal to take him to the Etihad Stadium would be eye-watering but Ronaldo's numbers show that even at 36, he still brings a guarantee of goals - and that is precisely what Pep Guardiola is looking for.
Gabriele Marcotti on the latest Transfer Talk podcast:
"What we do know is that Juventus made big losses over the last two seasons [the club confirmed in April the first half of the 2020/2021 financial year closed with a loss of €113.7m, added to a loss of €50.3m in the first half of the previous financial year]. This is a club listed on the stock exchange and cannot run themselves as if they were a money pit.
"It's not Ronaldo's fault they lost all that money, obviously it's Covid and other poor decisions they made, but the reality is Ronaldo earns about €65m per season gross, which works out at around £60m - in excess of £1m a week.
"He has a year left on his contract; a year from now they would lose him for nothing. While they are not going to come out and say they wouldn't mind if Ronaldo left, they are also mindful of the fact that if he did leave it would make it easier for them to immediately embark on their rebuilding.
"The flip side is Ronaldo stays and then a year from now they will lose him for nothing because it is going to be very difficult for Juventus to extend his deal unless he takes a huge pay cut. That's the uncomfortable situation they are in."
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