A Giant In Turin

Juventus and Ronaldo will likely win many trophies together, perhaps even break the Old Lady’s drought in the Champions League — but he is unlikely to touch the heights he did in Spain and England.

- Priyansh

On March 24, 39,000 people attended the Juventus women’s first-ever league game at the Allianz Stadium in Turin. It was a record attendance for a women’s match in Italy, another evidence of the Old Lady’s assured pre-eminence. In recent years, under the leadership of now-departed chief executive Giuseppe Marotta, Juventus has made a leap towards global popularity. The internationalist outlook of its brand was represented in the presence of stars such as Sofie Pedersen (Denmark), Eni Aluko (England) and Tuija Hyyrynen (Finland) on the team’s roster.

This is where Juventus aspired to reach for a number of years. To have a team with cache beyond Italy, at par with leaders from other European leagues. But the Turin giant could not become an international brand until it possessed the very best footballers. The men’s team was also guided by this preoccupation. Juventus certainly had a great team, but a player of gargantuan stature was missing from its personnel. That is why, last summer, the club sanctioned a transfer fee of over €100 million to prise Cristiano Ronaldo away from a club that had just won the Champions League thrice in succession, Real Madrid.

The situation was ripe for the move. All was not well between Ronaldo and Madrid; Juventus knew nothing else would reasonably make a bigger statement on the continental stage than acquiring his services. The club’s yearning for continental glory — the Old Lady has not won the Champions League since 1996 — would come closer to realisation once Ronaldo put pen to paper. Not since the heyday of Italian football, which lasted till the early 2000s, had a player of the Portuguese forward’s pedigree chosen Serie A as his destination.