Ronaldo Fenômeno announces purchase of Cruzeiro

The Cruzeiro will be purchased by Ronaldo Nazário. The deal was announced this Saturday afternoon (18) by the former player during an online broadcast on a social network. The former athlete was with the president of the Minas Gerais team, Sérgio Santos Rodrigues, who confirmed the negotiation.

“I want to say that I have a lot to give back,” said Ronaldo, who began his career as a player playing for the Minas team, for which he played from 1993 to 1994, before moving to PSV, in the Netherlands — he played 58 games and 56 goals. by the club.

“The club that revealed Ronaldo to the world, Ronaldo is now opening the doors of the world to that club again,” said Sérgio Rodrigues.

Currently, the former striker also owns a club in Spain, Valladolid, from the Second Division. In 2018, the Brazilian bought 51% of the team’s shares.

Sérgio Rodrigues also commented on the agreement. “[Ronaldo será] our majority shareholder of Cruzeiro SAF. Thanks. We are certain that this is a project that will be a pioneer for Brazilian football.”

The deal began to be sewn in mid-January, when the leader was in São Paulo for a meeting with the former athlete. At the time, he stated that “good things are to come”.

Pedro Mesquita, head of XP Investimentos, who participated in the operation, said that the deal was formatted in recent months. “It’s a negotiation that hasn’t started now. We’ve been talking for a long time. Like any good deal, we kept it under lock and key.”

According to Mesquita, there is still a series of procedures until the agreement is reached. “Cruzeiro has a big debt, it has all the procedures, renegotiations to be done, but it is the beginning of this new trajectory.”

Ronaldo will be the majority shareholder of Cruzeiro SAF (Sociedade Anônima do Futebol), created by the club two weeks ago.

On Friday (17), during a meeting, a change in the Minas Gerais team’s statute was approved to allow up to 90% of SAF shares to be in the hands of investors. Before, up to 49% could be sold.

In all, 564 people were present at the vote, including counselor and associates, out of about 3,000 eligible to vote. There were 544 votes in favor of the change, 18 against, one blank and one null.

“Yesterday, we needed approval for this to happen, and today we are here signing our intention to have Ronaldo now our shareholder, already known as ‘president’, now as our majority shareholder in Cruzeiro SAF. Thank you Ronaldo , welcome back”, commented Sérgio.

The club-company model is seen by the board as a way to recover the team, which is going through one of the biggest crises in its history. With a debt of around BRL 660 million, it will compete in 2022 in the Series B of the Brazilian Championship for the third consecutive year, which impacts revenue.

The club did not release any report or extract of its finances in 2021. The most recent document is from 2020 and shows how much revenue fell for playing in the Series B. In 2019, R$ 303 million were generated. In the first year after the fall, the value was R$ 120 million, according to a study by Itaú BBA.

“I have a lot to give back to Cruzeiro, to take Cruzeiro to the place where it deserves to be. We have a lot of work ahead of us, I ask the fans to reconnect with the club, go back to the club, to go to the stadiums, because we will need all the strength and unity of the Cruzeiro fans”, said Ronaldo.

“We have a lot of work ahead of us, we have nothing to celebrate for now, but we have a lot of ambition to make the giant Cruzeiro again,” he added.

Throughout this season, the team from Minas lived with delayed wages and ended Serie B only in 14th position. During much of the campaign, he ran the risk of falling to Serie C.

The situation has been recurrent at the club since the year of the fall. Late salaries, retired players and four different coaches during the 2019 Brazilian Championship, in addition to a police investigation involving members of the board, were some of the components that caused the drop.

That year, the administration was accused of irregular transactions and the use of front companies in the association’s business, in scandals that marked the management of former president Wagner Pires de Sá and former vice president of football Itair Machado.

In October 2020, the Public Ministry of Minas Gerais denounced the two and six others for crimes such as money laundering, embezzlement, ideological falsehood and formation of a criminal organization. They became defendants and respond in freedom.