Cristiano Ronaldo gamble still costing Juventus as they return to the Bernabeu

In cold, emotionless accounting-speak, the most expensive acquisition in Juventus’ history is now itemised as “the Ex Registered Player.”

Referred to only once by his name, Cristiano Ronaldo — or, to adopt the house style used by Juventus’ finance division, “the Former Player” — continues to make appearances in Turin even four years after he left Juventus, at a €14million (£12.2m/$16.3m at the current rates) loss, for a brief second spell with Manchester United.

One of the “main significant events” of last season at Juventus, according to their latest set of books, was another development in the arbitration between the club and the five-time Ballon d’Or winner. “The Former Player appeared in court with a notice of appearance dated 10 March 2025,” Juventus’ latest financial report disclosed. In dispute is the validity of a salary reduction agreement during the pandemic and the nearly €20million in wages Ronaldo claims he is owed.

Juventus filed an appeal challenging the award and swiftly paid half the amount last year. But Ronaldo did not drop the case. He came back and requested the rejection of that appeal, launching a counter-claim. He is seeking the full amount, plus interest. Every dime counts for The Former Player, who Bloomberg declared earlier this month to be the world’s first billionaire footballer. The case has, for now, been adjourned and a decision is expected to be taken in early January.

It is a reminder, as Juventus prepare to return to face Real Madrid in the Bernabeu on Wednesday for the first time since April 2018, of the cost of signing Ronaldo that summer and how the Italian club are still, in some respects, paying for it.

That Champions League quarter-final seven years ago was, in retrospect, a major turning point in the recent history of Juventus. Ronaldo scored an incredible hat-trick in the first leg in Turin and was charmed by the standing ovation his memorable bicycle-kick goal that night received from the home crowd. It opened his mind to playing for Juventus, something his agent Jorge Mendes confided in Fabio Paratici, their sporting director at the time.

THREAD: Cristiano Ronaldo Champions League moments 🔥

👏 The night Juventus Stadium rose to applaud @Cristiano‘s unbelievable bicycle kick…#UCL | @realmadriden pic.twitter.com/Tfh3dEe45d

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) February 5, 2021

A fortnight later, from three down on aggregate, Juventus very nearly pulled off the impossible in the return leg.

They were 3-0 up themselves and about to take the tie into extra time when referee Michael Oliver awarded a penalty against Mehdi Benatia. Juventus’ captain Gianluigi Buffon accused Oliver afterwards of having “a dustbin for a heart.” Who else converted the spot kick to send Madrid through but Ronaldo. It hardened the impression that all Juventus were missing was a player like him.

They had reached Champions League finals in 2015 and 2017, losing both — the latter to Madrid in Cardiff, where Ronaldo scored twice in a 4-1 win. When the opportunity presented itself to sign him, Juventus took it. Andrea Agnelli, their chairman at the time, has said subsequently that he has no regrets over the deal. “Never,” he told newspaper La Repubblica in 2021. “If I could go back, I’d do it again.”

Ronaldo was supposed to get Juventus over the line and make them the best in Europe again. “Bring us the Champions,” the fans chanted at his unveiling.

Juventus remained on top in Serie A — they won their eighth and ninth league titles in a row with Ronaldo — and he got to 100 goals quicker than any other player in their history, but Champions League success did not follow him from Madrid to Turin. Instead, a trophy that had felt within their grasp slipped further and further away. Juventus exited at the quarter-finals in Ronaldo’s debut year, then in the round of 16 in his second and final seasons — eliminated by Ajax, Lyon and Porto respectively.

As with his advocacy for a European Super League, one of Agnelli’s hopes for Ronaldo was that he’d help Juventus bridge the seemingly unbridgeable financial gap between his club, the Premier League elite, and Spanish giants Madrid and Barcelona by delivering sizeable commercial uplift. A visionary for much of his first eight years as chairman of Juventus, Agnelli did not foresee Covid-19. For the pandemic to happen so soon after committing to pay a 33-year-old €31million net per season — four times what the club’s next highest earner, Gonzalo Higuain, got — was unfortunate, to say the least.

The prospective Super League’s collapse during the Covid years therefore proved quite the double whammy, a rope ladder dropped from a helicopter but quickly pulled away.

Having made so many good calls up until 2018, many not-so-good ones followed. Juventus have stopped winning leagues. They have now gone five years without a Scudetto. After an unprecedented near-decade of dominance, the recent rut has led to some delayed appreciation for that achievement. By the same token, having nine-in-a-row as the backdrop makes going five without one feel like an eternity.

Interest in the counterfactual remains: what if Juventus had resisted the temptation to sign Ronaldo? Would Beppe Marotta, the most successful executive of the past 20 years in Italian football, have stayed rather than switching to Inter in December 2018? Might the club have been far less vulnerable in Covid and Agnelli more inclined to push for reform of the Champions League rather than a toxic Super League alternative? Maybe he would still be chairman today? We’ll never know.

Andrea Agnelli, Juventus chairman at the time, has said he has “no regrets” about signing Ronaldo (Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images)

Juventus have, in the meantime, tried to rebound. Agnelli brought his most successful coach, Max Allegri, back for a second spell. Dusan Vlahovic was signed for €80million in the belief he was in the Kylian Mbappe/Erling Haaland class of striker. Paul Pogba rejoined them, too. Both players, while on around a third of what Ronaldo had been making, were the highest-paid players in Serie A. The former will likely leave on a free transfer this summer. The latter had his contract terminated after being given a four-year suspension for a doping offence.

These were the last rolls of the dice before Agnelli and his board resigned in the winter of 2022 amid a series of investigations into Juventus’ financial affairs during the Covid period. These led to a points penalty, a one-year disqualification from Europe, a €10million fine that could escalate to €20m, a set of restated accounts, bans from football for Agnelli, vice-chairman Pavel Nedved and his former chief football officer Fabio Paratici which have now been served, and, as of earlier this month, suspended prison sentences, as each of them entered plea bargains in a false accounting case.

All of them deny wrongdoing and the plea bargain, as Agnelli laid out in a statement, is “without civil effects or additional penalties, without the acknowledgement of responsibility and, therefore, consistent with my position of innocence…”

The intervening three years since the abrupt end of Agnelli’s chairmanship have largely been about course correction. The board appointed by his cousin, the scion of the family, John Elkann, has worked on “resolving the issues it was facing with Sport Justice, both in Italy and Europe” and “started planning for the future without the backdrop of tension and instability that had characterised prior seasons.”

Off the pitch, Juventus have been welcomed back into the European Club Association (unlike Wednesday’s opponents and Super League die-hards Madrid) and kept a much lower political profile than before. On it, they are Champions League regulars once again.

After Allegri’s dismissal in May 2024, the break with the old was complete.

Elkann’s sporting director Cristiano Giuntoli could appoint his own coach, Thiago Motta, and having largely kept his powder dry for a year in order to overhaul the team for his choice to succeed Allegri, also set about spending a gross figure of more than €200million in the transfer market. Trouble is, Motta didn’t last a season. He was fired in March and replaced with Igor Tudor. Giuntoli then paid with his job in the summer.

So much for the end of all that instability.

Two of his three big signings, Douglas Luiz and Nico Gonzalez, who cost a combined €88million, are now out on loan at Nottingham Forest and Atletico Madrid. The other, Teun Koopmeiners (€57.3m), has been nowhere near the player he was for previous club Atalanta.

As damning, if not more so, were the sales of players who have come up through the academy or the Next Gen scheme introduced by Agnelli, a fine legacy which constitutes Juventus’ best chance at being sustainable and competitive.

Moise Kean scored 23 goals for Fiorentina last season. Matias Soule is currently Roma’s most decisive player, with three goals and two assists in seven Serie A appearances so far in the current campaign. Nothing stings more, though, than the short-sighted transfer of Dean Huijsen to Bournemouth for less than €20million. The young defender will be at the Bernabeu tonight, having been bought this summer by Madrid for three times that amount.

Juventus have been criticised for selling Dean Huijsen, now of Real Madrid, to Bournemouth (Denis Doyle/Getty Images)

These are choices Giuntoli’s replacement Damien Comolli has had to reckon with over the summer.

Last week, it emerged that UEFA, European football’s governing body, had notified Juventus on September 18 that it was opening proceedings for a potential breach of the football earnings rule under its new financial sustainability regulations, with a decision expected in the spring.

Their latest financial results show a €58million loss, a marked improvement on last year’s €123m and yet a remarkable figure all the same for a club who added Club World Cup money to revenue from the expanded and most lucrative Champions League ever. Madrid knocked Juventus out of that new-fangled competition in the United States in its round of 16. They now meet again three months on, both in transition but coming from very different bases.

Juventus are young. Sometimes spectacular, sometimes not. They’ve won 4-3 and drawn 4-4 this season. They lost 2-0 away to Como on Sunday. They are winless in six games and were whistled after a goalless stalemate with visitors Milan in their final match before the October international break.

At least there is Kenan Yildiz to admire. The 20-year-old is a superstar in the making, and it might be that their current No 10 has a night at the Bernabeu like the one Alessandro Del Piero enjoyed in November 2008. Del Piero scored both goals in a 2-0 away win that night and was given a memorable standing ovation from the Madrid fans.

📅 #OnThisDay in 2008…
⚽️ A Del Piero masterclass at the Bernabéu! #UCL @juventusfc @delpieroale pic.twitter.com/idEi37mxXc

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) November 5, 2018

That Juventus team have much in common with this season’s one: a club still pulling itself back together following controversy, taking one step forward and two steps back in an effort to get back to the top.

Agnelli showed the way in 2010, masterminding Juventus’ restoration. Who will now? Maybe, over time, Giorgio Chiellini, who has spent the past year progressing as an executive within the club.

In the hours leading up to today’s game, his old team-mate, the ‘Ex Registered Player’, is expected in India, where his Saudi Arabian employers Al Nassr are playing Goa in Asian football’s equivalent of the Europa League.

One wonders if, come full time there, Ronaldo will turn an eye to how two of his former clubs are getting on in the Spanish capital.