Why Real Madrid sold Ronaldo to AC Milan in 2007

Real Madrid sold three-time FIFA World Player of the Year winner Ronaldo in 2007 because manager Fabio Capello thought he lacked professionalism and was a distraction for others.

Ronaldo moved to Madrid in 2002 off the back of his resurrection at that summer’s World Cup.

Having had three injury-plagued seasons at Inter in the build up to the tournament in which he managed only 24 appearances – including not playing at all in 2000/01.

But he was selected by Brazil nonetheless and went on to score eight times, firing the Selecao to their record fifth World Cup and collecting the Golden Boot award. He also landed his second career Ballon d’Or and his third FIFA prize that year as a result.

Ronaldo joined Madrid at the peak of the Galacticos era, arriving the summer after Zinedine Zidane and the year before Davd Beckham – it is a period covered in Beckham’s new Netflix docuseries.

He was sensational, scoring 61 times across his first two seasons back in Spain – Ronaldo had previously had arguably the best single year of his entire career at Barcelona in 1996/97 – and then another healthy tally of 24 in his third.

But Ronaldo’s impact started to wane in 2005/06 as injuries started to affect him and his weight began to rise. The Galacticos era was also cracking and coming to an end, having ultimately not delivered the kind of success that Madrid president Florentino Perez had hoped for.

By 2006, Madrid signed Ruud van Nistelrooy and had re-hired notorious disciplinarian Capello, which ultimately signalled the end for Ronaldo at the club in 2007’s January transfer window.

Ronaldo swapped Real Madrid for AC Milan / Giuseppe Cacace/GettyImages

“In 2007, I decided to fire Ronaldo Nazario, he was someone who liked to party and got the group involved in going out with him,” Capello said during an address at the University Institute of Linguistic Mediators, via AS.

“One day, Van Nistelrooy came and told me: ‘Sir, it smells like alcohol here in the locker room’ and it was true. Ronaldo weighed 94 kg that year. In Korea, at the 2002 World Cup, he weighed 82. I told him to lose weight…he reached 92.5.”

Ronaldo wound up signing with AC Milan, where his career in Europe eventually ended a year later after suffering another major knee injury. But Capello admitted he had even tried to warn his former club – the Italian spent most of the 1990s at the helm there – off signing Ronaldo.

“[Silvio] Berlusconi called me one day to ask for advice on a hypothetical purchase of Ronaldo. I advised him against doing so, telling him that he was a party animal, and that he only thought about being surrounded by women,” Capello recalled.

“He told me: ‘Okay, thank you Fabio.’ A day later, Ronaldo signed for Milan, he didn’t pay attention to me.”