Former Barcelona president Joan Laporta has claimed the club could have signed Cristiano Ronaldo before he moved to Manchester United.
In an interview with Marca today, the official said the player was offered for less than what Manchester United paid, but the Catalan club missed the chance to make a deal.
The transfer was intermediated by Jorge Mendes, who took care of Cristiano Ronaldo’s career since the beginning. Although the player had only made a couple of appearances for Sporting’s first team, he was already being offered to the big clubs of Europe.
Mendes is well known to Manchester United and still has connections there via David De Gea. Whilst Mino Raiola is now very much the man at Manchester United, with Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Sergo Romero, the Ronaldo signing helped Mendes get his feet under the table and led to a series of other deals.
It could have all been very different, with Laporta explaining: “We had signed Ronaldinho, Marquez and Quaresma. We were in a process of rebuilding everything that was in the entity, so I was at Sporting Lisbon, before he signed for Manchester United, talking to his agent, who wanted to sell us Deco.
“We said we couldn’t do it because we could not stretch the arm more than the sleeve, but he told us that he had another very good boy. It was Ronaldo, he was agreed with United for €19m, but we were offered him for €17m.”
Cristiano Ronaldo signed for Manchester United from Sporting in 2003 for €19m. He stayed at the club for six seasons, scoring 118 goals in 291 matches.
The player ended up moving to Barcelona’s rivals Real Madrid in 2009 for €94m.
