Felt that I was no longer needed at Real Madrid: Cristiano Ronaldo

Highlighting the fact that he was only a means of making money, Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo said that he no longer felt ‘indispensable” to Real Madrid.

He also said that Real Madrid president Florentino Perez never really looked at him more than a favourable ‘business deal’.

“He only ever looked at me as a business relationship. I know it. What he told me never came from the heart,” Ronaldo said, in an interview with France Football.

Ronaldo left Real Madrid this summer for Italian giants Juventus to face newer challenges in a different league. Many in the Spanish club said that the high-profile transfer was purely on the basis of ‘will and the request of the player’, Ronaldo said that he felt he wasn’t needed in the club anymore.

“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. 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,” he added.

He also said that although he wanted to leave, he expected Perez to hold him back adding that his move to Juventus wasn’t fuelled by the urge to earn more money.

“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 that I always had the impression that 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,” he said.

Ronaldo was one of the reasons why the Spanish giants went on to win consecutive Champions League titles in the last three years and it was only after the final against Liverpool earlier this year in Kyiv, Ronaldo said that he would think over continuing to play for Real Madrid.

Surprisingly, head coach Zinedine Zidane announced that he is leaving the club after their Champions League triumph this year and when asked if his decision to leave Real Madrid hinged on that, Ronaldo said, “My decision to leave was not based on his departure. That being the case, it’s one of those little things that made me feel a bit better in terms of what I thought of the situation at the club.”

The Portuguese star forward recently has come under the scanner for an alleged rape incident. Kathryn Mayorga, a woman from the US accused the footballer of raping her in Las Vegas.

Speaking on how this allegation (which is yet to be proven true) has changed his life, the five-time Ballon d’Or winner said, “Of course, this story is interfering in my life. I have a partner, four children, an ageing mother, sisters, a brother, a family with whom I am very close. Not to mention my reputation, which is that of someone exemplary … Imagine what it means when someone accuses you of rape, whether you have all that or not. I know who I am and what I did. Truth will out one day. And the people who criticise me or seek to expose my life today, who make it into a circus, these people will see.”

“I explained to my partner. My son, Cristiano Jr, is too young to understand. It’s worst for my mother and my sisters. They are stunned, and at the same time very angry. This is the first time I have seen them in this state,” he elaborated.