Cristiano Ronaldo’s buy-out clause worth £1 billion
Cristiano Ronaldo’s agent Jorge Mendes believes the Real Madrid superstar’s asking price currently stands at an astonishing £1 billion. Mendes told the BBC that any club interested in Ronaldo, who has been in exceptional form having netted 36 goals in 31 appearances for the current European Champions, would have to be willing to pay a fee of £300 million for the 29-year-old. Mendes, a former DJ and nightclub owner, declared: “He’s the most expensive player ever in the world, because Ronaldo is the best player ever in the world, the best sportsman ever. You can’t compare him to anyone. His buyout clause is £1 billion, so he is worth £1 billion. It is impossible to buy someone like him. If for any reason the club decide to sell him tomorrow for £300m, someone will pay for sure.” Ronaldo has a contract with Real Madrid until June 2018.
Portuguese Mendes has risen from a DJ bar owner in Porto, where he became friends with many footballers, to one of the most powerful men in the game who has reportedly taken charge of transfers worth more than £1bn in total. He negotiated Angel Di Maria’s £59.7m move to Manchester United and Diego Costa’s £32m purchase by Chelsea last summer. He also represents Jose Mourinho, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Radamel Falcao, James Rodriguez and David De Gea.
But Ronaldo, who moved from Manchester United to Real Madrid for £80m in 2009 is his most important client.
That was a record-breaking transfer fee at the time but Mendes claimed it would not be long before a club paid £200m for a player. “Clubs like Manchester United or Real Madrid, if a player is worth £300m, of course they can do it,” said Mendes, who also said players are worth even more than clubs are currently paying. “The most important part of the game is the players,” he said, “they deserve the maximum amount possible. Of course there is a limit but you can pay until this limit. I think the limit may be in three years or maybe after that.”
With a typical ‘take’ of ten per cent commission per deal, the friend and adviser to Cristiano Ronaldo and Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho will have pocketed more than £20 million in last summer’s transfer window alone, and more than £100 million in commissions during his career. It doesn’t take a sport’s agent to realize that Ronaldo’s stated £1b evaluation, is obviously an over-exaggeration from Mendes, but then isn’t that the job of an agent, to talk up their clients in the most overblown way possible? He might just be the best player of all time, that debate is for another day, but Ronaldo is 30 in two days and after that point footballers’ value starts depreciating quickly. He is tied down until 2018 but with maybe five more years at his best, at the most, £300m is too much. Our best football predictions would suggest £150m closer to the real value of CR7 than £300, but even then will anyone really want to pay that?