Maradona: Ronaldo has a new lease of life in Juventus

Diego Maradona has been asked about Madrid’s decision to sell Ronaldo in an interview with the Spanish newspaper Marca – and the football legend thinks he knows the real reason Florentino Perez sold him for £100 million in the summer.

“I think that it was a good move for Cristiano,” Maradona began. “He gave his all to Madrid, he wasn’t enjoying it as much as he does now in Italian football and Florentino is always planning.

“When he saw Ronaldo was only getting a goal a game he sold him.”

Interesting. Maradona reckons Perez got rid of Ronaldo because he was only scoring a goal a game towards the end of his Madrid spell, instead of braces and hat-tricks.

It seems he believes that Perez thought Ronaldo was in the early stages of decline.

Asked if Madrid are missing Ronaldo, Maradona added: “Clearly yes but I always say that a player doesn’t make a club. Madrid will recover, they will win again, they have a great squad but the truth is that Ronaldo continues to score goals and people will say why was he sold.

“I always say that Florentino is clever and if he let him go it was for a reason.”

Ronaldo, meanwhile, recently confirmed that Perez played a big part in his decision to leave Madrid.

“I felt it inside the club, especially from the president, that they no longer considered me the same way that they did in the start,” the prolific forward was quoted as saying by the Guardian last month. “In the first four or five years there I had the feeling of being ‘Cristiano Ronaldo’. Less afterwards. The president looked at me through eyes that didn’t want to say the same thing, as if I was no longer indispensable to them, if you know what I mean.

“That’s what made me think about leaving. Sometimes I’d look at the news, where they were saying I was asking to leave. There was a bit of that but the truth is I always had the impression the president would not hold me back. If it had all been about money, I’d have moved to China, where I would have earned five times as much than here [at Juventus] or at Real. I did not come to Juve for the money. I earned the same in Madrid, if not more. The difference is that, at Juve, they really wanted me. They told me that and made it clear.” They showed me that.

“The truth is that the president wanted me but, at the same time, he made it known to me that my departure would not constitute a problem.