With most fans squarely focused on the first ever winter World Cup out in Qatar, fans of English Premier League side Manchester United had a few other distractions during the build up to the 2022 tournament kicking off, and the news concerned Cristiano Ronaldo.
The Portuguese international had quite a few issues in the first half of the 2022/23 campaign after attempts to leave the club during the summer transfer window failed to materialise, there were training issues during the pre season campaign, his relationship given the success of his first spell at the club with fans had massively deteriorated, and with ever growing problems with new manager Erik ten Hag, he even refused to be substituted on after he had been left out of the starting line up. Ronaldo certainly used his 30 no deposit free spins next to get his desired outcome.
Things came massively to a head the other week as Ronaldo conducted a seriously explosive interview with Piers Morgan and there were few people he did not lay into. The clubs owners, players within the dressing room, having no respect for Ten Hag himself, Ralf Rangnick and even Wayne Rooney and Gary Neville were in the firing line. A lot of what he said will have found favour with fans given their own issues about the management of the club, but it was clear what he was trying to achieve and for every understandable reason, a mutual termination of his contract was quickly agreed. For many more fans though, turning on the players and new manager Ten Hag was simply a step too far, and he lost a lot of support on that front for painting himself as bigger than the club.
With his departure from United now sorted, Ronaldo has been focused on his World Cup campaign and Portugal have likely qualified through to the knockout stage as they are sat in top spot in Group H with two wins from two, and only South Korea to go on Friday.
It appears, as most expected, that he will not be without a club for too long when his World Cup adventure is over and having previously mentioned that he received a two year offer from an unnamed Saudi Arabian club during his Morgan interview, journalist Fabrizio Romano has now claimed that Al Nassr have already tabled an offer for him to consider.
Taking to social media giant Twitter the other day to make the claim, Romano suggested that the contract offered would run until the summer of 2025 and would be worth a whopping 200 million Euros per year. However, he also suggests that a deal may not be as straight forward as most people would think, as a big part of the arrangement would be sponsor deals and an agreement on an image rights front would probably prove tricky.
Romano states that nothing has yet been agreed as obviously Ronaldo is focused on the current tournament, but the nine time Saudi Arabian champions certainly have the backing to make such a deal a reality, and even at 37 years old, Ronaldo will feel he still has a good few years left in him.
It would definitely be one of the more mouth watering deals done in football if it does come off.
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