According to Fiorentina President Rocco Commisso, Juventus’s current legal and financial problems can be traced back directly to the €117 million signing of Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018. While Ronaldo was a prolific scorer for Juventus, hitting 101 goals in 134 games, the club failed to win the Champions League, which was the reason he was brought in.
Juventus current legal and financial problems can be traced back directly to the €117 million signing of Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018 according to Fiorentina’s president Rocco Commisso.
Since then, things have gone from bad to worse for Juventus, with the whole board resigning in November 2021 after accusations of false accounting and market manipulation. Ronaldo was one of several players reportedly to have received secret payments during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Juventus have appealed the investigation against them and provisionally had 15 points reinstated in Serie A, but their predicament is not something that Commisso envies. It remains to be seen how Juventus will fare in the coming years, given their financial and legal problems.
Juve’s problems ‘started with Ronaldo’
Fiorentina President Rocco Commisso has stated that Juventus’s financial and legal problems can be traced back to the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018, which cost the club €117 million. While Ronaldo was a prolific scorer for Juventus, hitting 101 goals in 134 games, the club’s failure to win the Champions League and other issues have led to problems for the club, including accusations of false accounting and market manipulation.
Commisso has vowed that Fiorentina will not make the same mistake, saying that the club’s budget largely comes from him personally and that they will not end up bankrupt. Despite being a selling club, Fiorentina have been successful in the transfer market, selling Dusan Vlahovic to Juventus for a club-record fee of €81.6 million in January 2022.
Ronaldo left Juventus for Manchester United in the summer of 2021 and later joined Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, where he is now the highest-paid player in history on €200 million a season.