Arsenal failed to sign Cristiano Ronaldo as an 17-year-old because of the club’s plans to build the Emirates Stadium, according to a new biography of the Portuguese superstar’s agent, Jorge Mendes.
Arsène Wenger has said that missing out on Ronaldo before he joined Manchester United from Sporting Lisbon is the biggest regret of his career, especially because he spent a week-long trial at Arsenal.
It had previously been claimed that United gazumped Arsenal because of Sir Alex Ferguson’s Portuguese assistant, Carlos Queiroz, who had links with Sporting.
But the new biography of Mendes, the 'super-agent’ who is said to have negotiated transfers worth a total of £1 billion, claims that Arsenal missed out on Ronaldo because they failed to meet the asking price, and that the amount they could commit was compromised by their move from Highbury to Ashburton Grove.
The book has been written with Mendes’s approval and support and is to be released in English later this year under the title The Agent One, a reference to another of his most famous clients, Jose Mourinho.
It charts Mendes’s rise from nightclub owner to the world’s most powerful football agent, representing Ronaldo, Mourinho, Diego Costa, Manchester United players Radamel Falcao, Ángel di María and David de Gea, plus Real Madrid stars James Rodríguez, Pepe and Fábio Coentrão. As well as giving the fullest account of Arsenal’s failure to land Ronaldo, the book also reveals that Mourinho’s office at Chelsea features a pile of books which are all about … Jose Mourinho, and that Mourinho rejected the chance to sign Falcao and Di Maria because of Uefa’s financial fair play rules and because he did not want to upset Chelsea’s players by unbalancing the wage bill.
It claims that Mourinho signed a contract to coach Real Madrid hours after winning the Champions League with Inter Milan, and also that Costa had no knowledge he was joining Atlético Madrid in 2007 until he boarded a plane to the Spanish capital.
Mendes crashed his car on the way to meet Sir Alex Ferguson for the first time in 2002, turning up at the meeting with a badly bruised ear. Of the transfer of Ronaldo, the book reveals that Mendes and Sporting director of football Carlos Freitas held meetings with United, Juventus, Parma, Real Madrid and Arsenal about the winger, but it was then Arsenal chairman, David Dein, who most impressed. The book adds that Arsenal could only offer a small, unspecified sum.
Mendes says: “There was a moment in which I really thought he was going to Arsenal. David Dein is a spectacular person but, with the construction of their stadium, they were left with very little money and it wasn’t possible.”
Ronaldo also recounts his trip to Arsenal: “We were travelling by car and Jorge was calling us constantly telling me to hide so no one would see me. We went to a service station and I had to hide my face. I remember back then that Jorge was going crazy, those were Jorge’s craziest days.”
The following year 18-year-old Ronaldo shone in a 3-1 win over United in a pre-season friendly to open Sporting’s new stadium in Lisbon, the Estádio José Alvalade. That is seen as being the moment when United signed Ronaldo, but the book reveals that Ferguson had closed a deal with Mendes the previous night in the town of Cascais.
Mendes adds: “The only person key to everything was Alex Ferguson. He told me that Cristiano was going to play at least 50 per cent of the games for Manchester United and that’s what I wanted to hear. That’s why Cristiano went to Manchester United.”
The former United manager is also interviewed in the book, recalling that Mendes told him of Arsenal and Real’s interest. “I told him that we were very good at capturing the best young players and that the history of Manchester United is written by very young players. Jorge was delighted with us,” he said.
Ronaldo attended a glitzy launch of the book on Thursday, along with team-mate Rodríguez, plus Tiago and Miranda of Atlético, and the Valencia coach, Nuno Espírito Santo, who was Mendes’s first client.
Speaking at the launch, Mendes predicted Ronaldo would stay at Real Madrid until the end of his career and did little to assuage United fans’ fears that De Gea could follow in the forward’s footsteps by moving from Old Trafford to the Bernabéu.
De Gea is yet to renew his contract with United, which runs until 2016, and although he is a former Atlético player, he is believed to be open to a move to the European champions.
“I don’t know the future, things can change in five minutes, and we all know that in football nothing is impossible,” said Mendes. “But right now De Gea belongs to United and that has to be respected.”
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