Serie A can never be reduced to a one-man show and it simply cannot be all about Cristiano Ronaldo. Nevertheless, it is hard to understate the impact his arrival at Juventus has had on the league before a ball has even been kicked.
The 33-year-old five-time Ballon d’Or winner is not only one of the two best players of the last decade, he is also one of the most popular people on the planet. Ronaldo has 313m followers across all social media platforms and it feels like he has turned their attention to Serie A.
“Finally the world is talking about the Italian league again,” Fabio Capello marvelled in La Gazzetta dello Sport. “In the 80s and 90s we represented the top. Then we lost our way and weren’t capable of investing in infrastructure.
“With Ronaldo we can attempt to lift our head up. But it’s not enough on its own. We need to have the strength and intelligence to exploit the Ronaldo stimulus and give our game an impulse again.”
The consensus in the media viewed the £99.2m deal, which will earn Ronaldo £27.7m a year, as the most significant step yet in restoring Serie A to its former glory.
“The peak was in 2003 when we had two teams in the Champions League final,” recalled Claudio Ranieri, a former Juve manager, in La Stampa. “We’re not back to those days yet. But I feel like saying the days of skinny cows are over.”
Share your thoughts