Cristiano Ronaldo is at Juventus, but he could have easily not been there. He moved to the club in 2018 from Real Madrid and ahead of Juventus v AC Milan this Sunday, 'La Gazzetta dello Sport' has recalled when the Portuguese could have moved to AC Milan instead of Juventus.
In 2017, the Portuguese was contacted by AC Milan to see whether he was interested in signing for the historic club. His agent Jorge Mendes was spoken to by Marco Fassone who was the managing director at AC Milan.
"Yes, Yonghong Li wanted Cristiano Ronaldo at AC MIlan. He wanted him because he thought he would be able to pull in the Chinese market and he wanted him to leave Real Madrid. We saw each other in July 2017 to see how much it would cost and how keen the footballer was," Fassone said in 2018 just after Ronaldo had signed for Juve.
CR7 was close to playing the Europa League at AC: "He said to us: 'You're not in the Champions League, but I've never won the Europa League and I'll win it.' I was convinced," Mirabelli, the sporting director at that time, said.
In the end, Milan could not afford Cristiano Ronaldo and so he went to Juventus. At Juve, the Portuguese has scored 99 goals and given 20 assists in 129 appearances.