How Ronaldo ignored sacred rules of equality and humility in Juve dressing room’
Fallout from Cristiano Ronaldo’s Juventus departure continues to rumble on, with a damning new report in Italy claiming he failed to adhere to the most important rules of dressing room.
According to Italian publication Tuttosport, it was a case of one rule for Ronaldo and another for the rest among the Bianconeri during his three years in Turin.
They state Ronaldo ‘crumbled’ the rules inside the Juventus dressing room, which are made of equity, unity and humility.
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Another example the report provides is that a misplaced pass would see encouragement rather than criticism, but again that wasn’t always the case with the Portuguese superstar.
These stances affected the team on-and-off the pitch and was a contributing factor to their poor start to the campaign – with the Serie A outfit only winning one of their opening four matches in all competitions. Ronaldo was still on Juve’s books for the first three of those games.
The forward’s attacking qualities can’t be questioned, as his 101 goals in 134 games for the club attest to, but his lack of defensive effort for the team in terms of tracking back and adapting to the team spirit were reportedly noticed.
The 36-year-old left the Italian giants on August 31 to return to Manchester United in a £19.7million transfer – a deal that happened three games into Juventus’ season.
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Juve are currently enjoying a nine-game unbeaten run – triumphing in eight of those fixtures and highlighting their upturn in fortunes, post-Ronaldo.
And veteran centre-back pairing Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini have attributed this due to the looming of presence of Ronaldo not being there.
Speaking recently, Chiellini told DAZN: ‘Ronaldo left on August 28 and it certainly would’ve been better if he had gone earlier so we could prepare. Unfortunately, we paid a price for that.
‘It does create a shock to the system and we lost points in the opening games because of that. If he’d left on August 1, then we would’ve had time to reorganise and be ready for the start of the season.’
Chiellini’s comments echoed sentiments by Bonucci just weeks beforehand about Ronaldo too.
‘Cristiano’s presence had a big influence on us. Just training with him gave us something extra but subconsciously players started to think his presence alone was enough to win games,’ he told The Athletic.
‘We began to fall a little short in our daily work, the humility, the sacrifice, the desire to be there for your teammate day after day. Over the last few years, I think you could see that.’