MANCHESTER UNITED could have sold Cristiano Ronaldo for more than £500million when he left the club, Michael Owen has claimed.
The Portuguese legend, 39, departed Old Trafford for £80m in 2009 when he joined Real Madrid.
He had scored 118 goals in 292 games for the Red Devils, winning a host of trophies including three Premier League titles and the Champions League.
Ronaldo also moved to Spain as a Ballon d’Or winner having collected the 2008 award ahead of Lionel Messi and Fernando Torres.
England striker Owen, 44, took the No7 shirt at Man Utd following Ronaldo’s exit having joined in the same summer transfer window.
He would go on to score 17 goals in 52 games, struggling to fill the huge shoes of his predecessor.
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Meanwhile, Ronaldo scored 450 goals in 438 matches for Real Madrid across a nine-year spell that solidified him as one of the all-time greats.
Now Owen has spoken about the price Ronaldo left Man Utd for and how it should have far exceeded the £200m mark set by Neymar – despite the Portuguese superstar’s move happening 15 years ago.
Speaking to Genting Casino, he said: “If you look at the transfer record now of over £200million, you’d have to say that Cristiano Ronaldo was worth more than that at Manchester United.
“In hindsight, for what he gives you, look at the amount of Champions League medals he’s going to pretty much win you single-handedly, for the amount of shirts and the publicity and the merchandise around the world that he’s going to sell.”
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He continued: “In hindsight, I think £500m would be cheap. You could even double that if you look at the goals, the trophies, the shirts, and how much the clubs have benefited from having him there.
“Since he played for Real Madrid they’ve thrown hundreds and hundreds of millions on the new stadium, they are in a great financial position.
“They’re paying all this money to Kylian Mbappe and Jude Bellingham – a lot of this will have been off the back of the success of Cristiano Ronaldo.
“How he’s grown their brand, how he’s won them trophies and made them all this money.
“So I guess if you’d said to them at that point how much he would give you for nine seasons, they might say yes to a billion pounds, forget about £80m. £500m would be cheap.”
Owen also opened up about how he felt replacing Ronaldo – who returned for a second spell at the club in 2021.
He added: “I think because I was at that stage of my career I didn’t feel any pressure in taking Cristiano Ronaldo’s shirt number and that’s what Sir Alex Ferguson said to me.
“He said to me when he handed me the number because I had pretty much been there, seen it, done it and played for great teams under the biggest of pressures and won the biggest of trophies.
“It was probably in safe hands. I wasn’t going to go into a nightclub and do anything stupid or be disrespectful to the shirt in any way.
“I was a pro and people knew my character and knew that it was in safe hands. There also wasn’t the expectation of matching his 40 goals because I was coming to the end of my career.
“But I think from the manager’s point of view, he wanted it represented really well. When you look at the players that have worn it in the past, then he wanted it in safe hands and I would like to think I treated it with a lot of respect and that was probably the reason.
“I’ve had a bad back since wearing that with the weight of it! But no, on a serious note, it was a huge honour at the time to be offered. And I was definitely not going to say no.”
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Ronaldo recently criticised Man Utd’s ambitions under Erik ten Hag, insisting they need to “rebuild everything”.
Ten Hag responded by saying the Al-Nassr forward is “far away in Saudi”.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
