Real Madrid president confident Cristiano Ronaldo will stay with club
Real Madrid president Florentino Perez expressed confidence that star player Cristiano Ronaldo isn’t leaving the club despite reports that Ronaldo has interest in exiting Real Madrid.
“No offer has arrived and what we think is that Ronaldo is a Real Madrid player and will continue to be,” Perez said on a radio interview in Spain per the Madrid-based newspaper Marca.
Ronaldo signed a new contract with Real Madrid through 2021 and had previously said on multiple occasions that he would like to end his career with the club. But the soccer star has since changed his tune — according to reports from Marca and the Portuguese newspaper A Bola — because Real Madrid hadn’t backed him enough while he’s been under scrutiny amid tax fraud accusations.
A Spanish state prosecutor has accused the 32-year-old of purposely failing to pay $16.5 million on image rights between 2011 and 2014. A Spanish judge summoned Ronaldo, who has continually denied any wrongdoing, to court to answer questions about the alleged tax fraud. He will have to appear in the Pozuelo de Alarcon court on July 31.
“I’m going to talk to him soon. I have not talked to him yet,” Perez said in the interview. “I think the worst thing is how Cristiano has been portrayed, and in that I agree with him. …Some media have given an image of him, more or less delinquent. For a person of his professional prestige and honesty, (that portrayed image) is not easy to understand. The presumption of innocence has not been taken into account."
Ronaldo, who said recently his conscience is clear amid the tax case, retained the top spot on Forbes’ 2017 list of the 100 Highest Paid Athletes in the World, with earnings of $93 million.