Transfer Move: See Why Ronaldo’s Move To Chelsea Is A Must.
This season has served a shock with the Coronavirus pandemic disrupting football, however ahead of next season clubs are on the offence.
Chelsea hugged the headlines last week positively with the acquisition of Timo Werner, pursuit of Bayer Leverkusen’s Kai Havertz, Juventus’ Miralem Pjanic, the audacious chase of Cristiano Ronaldo.
These are interesting times especially with the statements from UEFA has relaxed Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules following the Coronavirus pandemic.
Manager Frank Lampard last Christmas had wished for a forward line of football’s deadliest to the Chelsea board.
While Lampard wants to have a say in Chelsea’s transfer activity, he joked about signing three of the world’s best attackers – Barcelona’s Messi, Juventus’ Ronaldo and Paris Saint-Germain’s Mbappe. “If I say I want Mbappe, Ronaldo and Messi for my front three I might get knocked back,” the Chelsea head coach said.
“I wouldn’t say that, but it’s obviously a balance where I can put forward a recommendation and have an open conversation with the owner and hope we move forward in the right direction. I’m very open about that. My biggest thing here is how hard can we work on the training ground because I know we have a good squad, that’s my main concern. Of course when it comes to recruitment I want to have a big say in it and we are very open.”
Those words as flippant as they came have formed the bedrock of Chelsea’s transfer pursuit. With Liverpool and Manchester City stronger in terms of players and ambitions.
The signing of Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner have powered more headlines about Chelsea’s ambition ahead of next season. This year has seen a growth of the young products in the first team. Lampard said ” the idea of going into the academy and giving these boys a chance was a really good one, because they’ve deserved it,” he said.
“And they haven’t been given that so much in the past. So I do think maybe we’ve changed their [the club’s] minds a bit on that one.”
But the buzz around Ronaldo is certainly a main show. The Portuguese a showstopper offers Chelsea a larger presence on and off the pitch.
The endorsement and commercial viability is outstanding. Using the Juventus model here is a breakdown of his contributed effort to the club and why it is a delight for the blues.
Juventus president Andrea Agnelli subsequently admitted that the deal to sign Ronaldo represented the first time during his administration that a player had been signed after taking the potential financial benefits into consideration..
After all, how else would one explain the decision to put together an overall package of €340m (£293m/$375m) – including fee, wages and taxes – for a 33-year-old forward?
‘The Ronaldo effect’ had been decisive.
Marco Bellinazzo of Il Sole 24 Ore, and author of La fine del calcio italiano said “Juventus are trying to position themselves alongside clubs with massive global appeal and huge budgets like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United.
“To compete with these clubs, you need to have a strong squad, but also important players within that squad who have a lot of followers on social media.
“Quality coupled with popularity enables a club to increase its revenue.
“Ronaldo, therefore, was the perfect signing for Juventus to achieve both of their objectives.”
The Portuguese hasn’t disappointed on either front thus far.
Ronaldo, who turned 34 in February, was named Serie A’s Most Valuable Player at the end of his debut campaign in Italy, after netting 21 goals during Juve’s Scudetto success, while he also dragged the Bianconeri to the quarter-finals of the Champions League with a sensational hat-trick in the second leg of the epic last-16 comeback against Atletico Madrid last season.
This season he has 22 goals already in Serie A, while Chelsea’s strikers (Abraham, Giroud, and Batshuayi) have scored 24 in the league.
The five-time Ballon d’Or winner has arguably made an even greater impact off the field, though.
It was certainly more immediate.
In the 24 hours after his transfer to Turin was made official, between July 10 and 11, Juve’s various social media accounts were boosted by more than 2.2 million followers.
Unsurprisingly, that social media spike has continued over the past 22 months.
Juve’s number of Instagram followers has rocketed from 9.8m to a whopping 40.3m, while the amount of subscribers to their YouTube account has more than trebled (730,000 to 2.67m).
The Old Lady has added over 7.5m followers on Facebook, and 1.7m on their Italian Twitter profile alone. It was obviously no coincidence either that they launched a Portuguese Twitter account in September of last year.
This is what makes Ronaldo so valuable to Juventus, his global popularity.
He is the most followed person in the world on Instagram.
The definition of sport is changing, as Agnelli noted at Juve’s shareholders’ meeting for 2019.
“Digital activity is strategic for us – it’s fundamental to maintain a global dimension. Millennials and Generation Z are important to us and we will have to seize market opportunities.”
Tellingly, in the age of influencers, Juventus have signed the most influential.
Ronaldo’s move to Juventus has, thus, opened the club up to new followers and, in turn, opened new markets up for the club.
In January, the Bianconeri signed a new, improved, seven-year sponsorship deal with their kit manufacture, adidas, worth €357m (£308m/$395m) – double the value of the previous agreement.
Then, only last month, it was announced that the club had extended their partnership with shirt sponsors JEEP.
The new deal is worth €42m (£36.2m/$46.4m); the old one had been worth ‘only’ €17m (£14.6m/$18.8m).
Juve’s new partnerships are of even greater interest, though. Consider the case of Konami.
The Japanese entertainment conglomerate were already in talks with Juve over securing exclusive rights to use the club in their video game franchise, Pro Evolution Soccer, when the news broke that Ronaldo was bound for Turin. Juve are obviously benefitting from Ronaldo’s presence in the very same way.
“The idea that he pays for himself in terms of shirt sales is a nonsense but he has brought a significant boost in terms of merchandising and helped bring about a doubling of the value of their shirt sponsorship and supplier deals.
“There’s also been an increase in revenue from ticket sales to €70m, which is obviously down to his presence.
“So, the Ronaldo effect is real. It’s there for all to see.But the Blues must also realize that from the footballing terms he will charge an arm and a leg despite being in his mid thirties and arriving the turn of his career. has made the wish, the board have kicked into action – can the momentum transform into a win? We’ll see.
