CALL THE COPS WHEN RONALDO MET INTER
It was early in the summer of 1997 and Barcelona president Jose Luis Nunez had a problem. Just under a year ago he’d sent his right-hand man and future successor, Joan Gaspart, to the Brazil team hotel in Miami, disguised as a waiter, to persuade teenage striker Ronaldo to join Barça from PSV Eindhoven. Now, after one remarkable campaign at the Camp Nou, scoring 47 goals in 49 games, it was looking increasingly likely that his radiant, unstoppable star was going to walk out on him, just as another presidential election was looming at the Catalan club.
Nunez had been slow to follow up on his promise of improved terms on Ronaldo’s initial five-year contract, made just a couple of months after the marksman’s La Liga debut, which angered the Brazilian and his mini entourage of agents.
It was May, nearing the end of the season, and still no offer was forthcoming. When Nunez made a show of waving a new 10-year contract around and called a press conference to announce that “Ronaldo is now Barcelona’s forever,” club and player had a serious falling out. “Everything Nunez has said is a lie and we no longer need to negotiate with them,” the forward said. “He has been cheating us for seven months.”
Everyone who saw (The Phenomenon) was entranced, all the time. Massimo Moratti, Nunez’s counterpart at Inter and never a man shy of throwing his considerable cash around, had been courting the goal-getter since watching him hit a hat-trick for Barça against Atletico Madrid on television. Ronaldo agreed to sign for the Italian side while away on international duty at the Copa America, paving the way for Moratti to trigger the required £17 million buy-out clause in his contract. The full fee would rise to £25m, the second time in Ronaldo’s still-young career that he had broken
