Former, and potential future Barcelona president Joan Laporta would love to bring Cristiano Ronaldo to the Camp Nou but the operation seems too hard to pull off.
The Real Madrid striker has come close to joining Barcelona before, but now there is so much bad blood in the situation it is hard to imagine it happening.
The story comes from a lunch meeting between Laporta and Ronaldo's representative, Jorge Mendes, which took place on Thursday.
Radio station Cadena Ser's El Larguero programme explained that Laporta had enquired about bringing Ronaldo to Barcelona, h/t AS .
Laporta wants to be re-elected as Barcelona president next year and, per that AS story, he currently leads the way as reflected by an Amber survey.
Laporta has 33.8 per cent of the vote, while Agusti Benedito has 23.9 per cent, and the incumbent president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, only 17.9 per cent, with the rest of those polled undecided.
When presidential candidates are jostling for position ahead of an election, big claims and aims always seem to leak out.
We've already seen a claim that if Laporta takes over Barcelona may try to appoint Chelsea's Jose Mourinho as manager, here in the Metro .
And back in 2003, Goal.com remind us that Laporta promised the club David Beckham, and we all know that didn't happen.
Mentioning big names is a way for presidential candidates to stoke up excitement, so whenever their name is mentioned there's an adrenaline rush, even if it's based on unrealistic pledges or targets.
But let's say that Laporta was deadly serious about bringing Ronaldo to Barcelona, should he be elected. Then what obstacles would there be?
The price of the deal for one. Real Madrid might let Ronaldo go to Manchester United at the right price, but there's no way they'd ever sell him to Barcelona unless their hand was forced.
Barcelona could do that, by getting Ronaldo to trigger his transfer release clause, but for the Portugal star to do that, there would have to be a seriously good reason to leave.
The Catalan giants being the dominant side in Spanish football probably wouldn't be enough justification; it would have to coincide with trouble at Real Madrid of some kind.
As long as Madrid are still in the Champions League, Ronaldo will see no reason to leave, least of all to Barcelona.
He will want to protect his legacy and go down as Madrid' greatest ever player, or at least try to.
Ronaldo's sponsors, Nike, would be happy with a switch to Barcelona, because they work with the Catalan side. They may even be willing to help fund part of the deal.
Back in 2003, Barcelona could have signed Ronaldo from Sporting Lisbon but opted for Ricardo Quaresma instead.
Laporta told Onda Cero, h/t the Daily Mail : "We could have got Ronaldo for a lower price than Manchester United eventually paid for him. However, we had just signed Ronaldinho , Ricardo Quaresma and Rafael Marquez, and we lacked the financial resources to make another signing."
The relationship between Ronaldo and Barcelona's Lionel Messi might be a problem too, both in a personal sense and in a clash of brands.
Messi is an Adidas boy, while Ronaldo is Nike. Both those brands will need their man to be the head of the team, the star player.
Even if the will to bring Ronaldo to Barcelona was there, even if the money to do such a thing existed, there is just too much in the way of a potential transfer for it to happen.
from Bleacher Report http://ift.tt/1utknWn
via IFTTT November 14, 2014 at 04:20AM
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