Why Ronaldo Nazario Left Fc Barcelona.

The history of FC Barcelona is full of legendary players, like Messi, Maradona, Cruyff, Romario, Rivaldo and Luis González. But over the years, they always find themselves in a circle, which is that they sign a world-class player, he immediately shows his quality, and after a few years, a richer club comes along and takes him away from them. This has happened many times, and they have never learned the lesson. The last time it happened was with Ousmane Dembélé. Maybe Dembélé's departure was Because for example, Ronaldo Nazário was the best talent in the world, when he arrived at Barcelona in 1996 from PSV Eindhoven, and they signed him for 19.5 million dollars, which was a world record at the time. And he deserved every penny paid for him. Because when he arrived at PSV, he was only 18, and in the two years he spent there, he contributed with 61 goals, in just 57 games, scoring 54 and providing 7 assists. And he did the same at Barcelona in just one season, because in his very first game, he played a supercup final against Atlético de Madrid, and scored two goals and provided one assist. And what's crazy is that he just arrived the day before, which means he didn't do any pre-season with the team, and never played with them. But they ended up benching their main striker Pizjó on day one, who was very good by the way. But he deserved it, because Ronaldo ended up contributing with 60 goals, in just 49 games, scoring 47 and making 13 assists. I know those numbers with Messi, Cristiano, Haaland, Mbappé look like nothing, but at the time it was insane. In fact, you know what, I take it back, even today it seems unbelievable. So now FC Barcelona has the best talent and the best player in the world who will serve them for years. But they have a problem, which is that even when he arrived signed an 8-year contract, they only put 24 million dollars in his buyout clause. Why? Because they said let's test him for a year, and if he's good, they will renew his contract by changing the existing clauses in exchange for better financial agreements. Also, nobody imagined that there is any club that would activate this clause, because it was a lot of money at that time. And that's what they did. According to Juan Gaspart, who was vice-president at that time, and later became president, he described exactly what happened. So basically where he said was that at the end of the season, they sat down with Ronaldo and his two agents. They had the contract in hand, and they agreed on all things, they just needed to sign it. But before that, they said let's go for dinner, because it was 3pm, and then we'll go and see president Josep Nunes to sign the contract. And that's what they did. But during dinner, one of the agents went out to take a phone call for But at that point, nobody cared, because everyone was happy. But when he came back from his call, he told them to go to the president's office, and told Ronaldo to go home, and they would call him afterwards to sign the contract. So long story short, it turned out that the agent was on the phone with the president of Inter Milan, Massimo Morotio, who made them a better offer, so they started renegotiating almost the whole contract, and asked for better financial terms. But Barcelona couldn't give them what they were asking for, and the very next day, Inter transferred the money to La Liga's accounts, making him the second player after Diego Maradona to break the world transfer record twice. Of course, Barcelona didn't just give up on the player, they went to FIFA and filed a complaint against Inter, not to keep the player, but to force Inter to pay more, and they agreed to pay another 400 million pesetas, which was Spain's currency before the euro, and that's the euro didn't exist in 97, and if I'm not mistaken 400 million pesetas was like 2.4 million dollars at the time. And that's how Ronaldo Nazario's story at Barcelona ended after just one season, and that's of course all according to Gaspart, but now let's look at the Ronaldo side, because he said something a little bit different, which is that he was in the Brazilian national team cap in Norway, and his agent called him and said, we have reached an agreement with Barca, you will stay on under a new contract, and you can do a press conference now if you want, and that's what he did, he announced it and said he was happy to stay and never wanted to leave, but after 3 days, Barcelona called him and said, we can sign a new contract with you, if you want to leave, just bring who can pay for your buyout class, of course he was shocked, but after his agent met him, he started telling him about Inter's offer, he responded by saying So here is what I understood, Ronaldo didn't know what was going on and the full story at that time, his agent didn't mention anything about Inter Milan until everything was over with Barca, on the other hand Barcelona didn't value him much, I mean giving him a better salary and good compensations for the agents, also it was a good deal for the club to receive all that money, I say that because you know back then there wasn't much transparency on transactions like there is today, and Ronaldo himself said in another interview, it was never my decision, I wanted to stay, if the club didn't value me as much as they should have, it wasn't my decision, Gaspard also said that Ronaldo told him in tears that he was sorry and that his agent had a much better offer and that it was better for all parties if you went to another club to earn more money, to be honest I don't know which to believe, because the two stories aren't identical, but if it means one thing, it's that Barca didn't try very hard or couldn't afford to keep him and that Ronaldo found a better offer for himself and for his agents, and Barca absolutely made a mistake because for the season he spent there, he won the Ballon d'Or, becoming the youngest and first South American to do so, and as you know in 2002 he won the World Cup and the second Ballon d'Or and he immediately returned to La Liga, but this time to the rivals, Real Madrid, Gaspard who was president at the time, recently said that Ronaldo told him in 2002, that if they matched Real Madrid's offer, he would choose Barcelona, but it was a huge offer and they couldn't make such a big investment for a player who had lived in that way, but we don't know if he told him that or not, or if he was being honest or not, because Ronaldo always said that his dream was to play for Real Madrid, and Roberto Carlos was always telling him what it was like to play there, so he wanted to see it by himself, plus Real Madrid had a better project and the best players in the world, whereas Barcelona were suffering and hadn't won a title for years, and that year they hadn't even qualified for the Champions League, but Gaspard tried to prove his point by saying that Ronaldo's heart is more blue grana than Madrid, because he has better memories of his time at Barcelona, and that may or may not be true, but it won't make us forget that this shouldn't have last time in the first place, because even with many injuries, he's still one of the best in history.