Cristiano Ronaldo: I Left Real Madrid Because Of President Florentino Perez

However he has confirmed that this was not for sporting reasons, but due to a break down in relations with the club’s president – Florentino Perez.

Perez is renowned as a shrewd, ruthless operator and according to an interview with ‘France Football’, his treatment of Ronaldo as a commodity rather than a person angered the former Manchester United man.

“I felt it inside the club, especially from the president, that they no longer considered me the same way that they did in the start,” he commented.

“In the first four or five years there, I had the feeling of being ‘Cristiano Ronaldo’. Less afterwards. The president looked at me through eyes that didn’t want to say the same thing, as if I was no longer indispensable to them, if you know what I mean.

“That’s what made me think about leaving. Sometimes I’d look at the news, where they were saying I was asking to leave. There was a bit of that, but the truth is that I always had the impression that the president would not hold me back.

”If it had all been about money, I’d have moved to China, where I would have earned five times as much than here [at Juventus] or at Real. I did not come to Juve for the money. I earned the same in Madrid, if not more. The difference is that, at Juve, they really wanted me. They told me that and made it clear. They showed me that.”

He continued to criticise the Real chief, saying: “He only ever looked at me as a business relationship. I know it. What he told me never came from the heart.”

It had been suggested that Ronaldo left due to Zinedine Zidane’s departure as manager but he denied this, saying: “My decision to leave was not based on his departure. That being the case, it’s one of those little things that made me feel a bit better in terms of what I thought of the situation at the club.”