Back at the weekend, Brazil legend Ronaldo Nazário announced the takeover of his former club Cruzeiro, in a deal which will cost him and his backers R$400m (£60m).
This is the first time a big Brazilian side has been put on sale, so it obviously had huge media coverage, with many rumours about who’d be the Raposa’s new owners.
Before Ronaldo’s surprising deal was announced, one of the most famous bidders was said to be Fenway Sports Group, with big excitement from Cruzeiro fans who expected their club to be new partners of Liverpool.
Outlet Super Esportes credited anonymous sources saying the Reds’ owners were in talks for the takeover, with Aoísio Vasconcelos, a former Cruzeiro official who’s close to president Sérgio Rodrigues, confirming the claims.
“The negotiation is international. There will be proposals from all sides. I support the proposal of the Bank of Boston, which has links with XP. They own Liverpool, which is the best organised and managed football club in Europe.”
However, now that the sale is done, XP, the company who handled the talks, have gone public to say that Fenway Sports Group and Liverpool were never a possibility. The quotes come from Pedro Mesquita, one of the owners.
“There was never Liverpool, there was never any negotiation with Liverpool. In fact, there was an attempt on our side, but Liverpool declined any interest in Cruzeiro. This situation of Liverpool came out on the internet due to a post from a fan who said that I was in Boston, and the Boston Red Sox is in the same group as Liverpool. And they said I was negotiating with this group,” he said.
“Everyone fell for this story and some adviser spoke of Liverpool’s proposal, which never existed. This reverberated to news on Brazil websites, which reverberated to websites in England, which reverberated to news that Ronaldo’s proposal beat the proposal of Liverpool: It’s a story that’s not true, there was never Liverpool’s proposal, we had, in addition to Ronaldo, two other situations, and nobody here is hiding anything, we are working for Cruzeiro in a professional way. Ronaldo’s choice of proposal was undoubtedly the most financially attractive.”
