Manchester United legend Ryan Giggs has a very interesting take on what motivated Cristiano Ronaldo to leave Real Madrid after nine years and join Juventus. Giggs, who played alongside Ronaldo at United, says that CR7’s obsession with being compared to Lionel Messi propelled the move to a different country and a new league.
Ronaldo and Messi have duopolized the Ballon d’Or over the past decade, as each man has claimed the award five times, fostering a huge individual rivalry between the two superstars.
No other player has claimed the award over that time span, and Giggs believed that Ronaldo made the £88 million €100m transfer to further distinguish and differentiate himself from the Barca talisman.
Speaking with ITV Sport (transcript Daily Post Nigeria), Giggs said: “I’m surprised that he would leave Real Madrid and go to Italy.
“I think it’s a big challenge for him but he’s going to a huge club. Having that on your CV… Real Madrid, Man United and Juventus. It’s some CV.”
“He’s obsessed with being better than Messi. He has that now that: ‘I did it in England, I did it in Spain, I’m going to do it in Italy… and I did it with Portugal’. So maybe that will be his argument when people ask: ‘Is Ronaldo better than Messi?’.”
Giggs does make a good point, as Ronaldo did allude to this being the right time to take on new challenges in his goodbye letter. Sure, “new challenges” is standard, tests well on focus groups kind of boilerplate for official goodbye letters, but that doesn’t mean it’s not also true in this case.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, is currently a regular contributor to SB Nation, WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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