Last summer, Juventus splashed the cash to bring Cristiano Ronaldo to their club from Real Madrid. Despite being 33 years old at the time of the move, Ronaldo still fetched a staggering £99.2 million transfer fee. The reason behind the move by Juventus was to elevate them to be one of the best teams in Europe, and one of the best teams in the world. Ronaldo is key to bringing that, but to be called that they have to prove themselves outside of Italy.
Winning the Italian league is always a worthy achievement, but they have won the title for the past seven years, and would more than likely have won it again this season even without Ronaldo. What the Portuguese forward needs to do is bring European success to the club, and primarily that is what he is paid to do.
The club sees European success in the Champions League as them elevating themselves to the next level, and after seeing Ronaldo lead Real Madrid to the title so many times in recent years, they have gone out and got the best in the business to do the same for them.
Real Madrid have won the Champions League for the past three seasons, and they have won four out of the last five. Perhaps the biggest point to look at here is the fact that Juventus have been beaten finalists in two of the last four years, once against Real Madrid and once against Barcelona. When a big club suffers defeat it can be easy to hope to have another shot at winning the competition again, but the very best clubs out there will learn from what happened and use it to become a strength of theirs.
Juventus saw Cristiano Ronaldo lead Real Madrid to victory against them, and saw Lionel Messi lead Barcelona to victory against them. Instead of holding their hands up and saying they were beaten by a better team, Juventus learnt from their experience, and they went out and signed Cristiano Ronaldo to put things right.
In the latest Serie A betting, Juventus are 1/40 to lift the trophy at the end of the season. Another league title is great, but that is not the competition where Cristiano Ronaldo and his transfer to the club will be judged.
That will come in the Champions League, where Juventus are currently in the knockout round and priced up at 7/1 to win the competition. That puts them ahead of Real Madrid, who they took Ronaldo off, and this could be their best chance of winning the tournament with the team that they have.
When Ronaldo was brought into the team, he wasn’t signed as a player that would bring the Serie A title home once again. He was signed to play on the biggest stage of them all, and one that he had proven himself on before while at Real Madrid. That is the Champions League stage, and that is the trophy that Ronaldo has to bring home for his transfer last summer to be called a success.
Leave us a reply