A week without CR7. But did Ronaldo really want to leave or did Juve expect nothing else? And was it good or bad? The judgments are not unanimous. There are those like our Director, Agresti, who think that, in the end, they both lost. There are those who, like the authentic Juventus-Juventus player Chirico, think that Juventus has been forced into a corner to suffer the will of the player and his agent. All this is partly true, partly not.
Indeed, let’s start right here: Did Ronaldo really run away, leaving the Bianconeri in check? Let’s go back almost two months to just before the Europeans. At Juve, between ritual diplomacy (always necessary) they made us understand one thing above all: if Ronaldo wants to stay, he stays, otherwise he will be sold. The ballet of CR7 and Mendes was longer than expected, the buyers were not running in droves, Allegri made melina (“if it stays, it stays”): they were not declarations of love, there was, above all, still a year of contract to honor.
In the end, if we look at it from another point of view, Ronaldo was sold. Is this Juve agreed? We think so. Allegri immediately thought of the “imbalance” brought about by the advent of the champion complete with a personal form (plays only on the left, focuses and looks for the side, then pulls). Sarri went to see him with hat in hand, to hear the same things, but above all it was the budget that got unbalanced.
How were these three Ronaldesque years? What did they add? THEn numerical terms have subtracted: 3 mediocre Champions and 2 championships, with a narrow fourth place. The gross cost? 180 million. Wasn’t he hired to win the Champions League? And hadn’t Juve added up league titles without Ronaldo while walking through the championship? It’s true, CR7 repeatedly scored and took the top scorer (all penalties and free-kicks shot: good in the first case, bad in the second). But let’s face it, that’s not why you take someone like him.
Technically, neither Allegri, nor Sarri, nor Pirlo managed to do what should have been done: mutual synergy between the team and the great striker. Ronaldo focuses the maneuver too much and, thanks to the injuries, cannibalizes Dybala. Perhaps weighed down by the princely engagement, Juve try to save money on the midfield and don’t care about the full-back problem. He launches the imaginative Pjanic-Arthur exchange, takes Ramsey on a free transfer. Sure, De Ligt and Chiesa are good hits, but instead of a virtuous synergy it’s a vicious synergy. Even the great effort with which Locatelli was acquired seems to give a foretaste of the economic “ballast” of the 60 million a year represented by Ronaldo.
Did the social contacts and the sale of shirts work, but did Juve manage, through Ronaldo, to become a leading, modern team, a point of reference for contemporary football? The Ronaldo firm and the Juventus firm have never fully married, as if the team and the club had not managed to spread properly, making a boundless individualism a real added value. We would not be able to fully identify whose responsibilities are the greatest in a combination, which numbers and results cannot define as optimal.
We think that with the 15 million collected by Juve this departure is not so deleterious. It is not from Ronaldo that this Juventus could start again.
