Cruzeiro will be Ronaldo’s second club, a businessman with diverse activities

The announcement that Ronaldo Nazário will buy Cruzeiro surprised Brazilian football, but it matches the ambitious business profile that the former player has built in recent years.

Retired from lawns since 2011, the Phenomenon turned 45 in 2021 and spent the last decade focusing on business. In September 2018, it acquired Valladolid (ESP), currently in the second Spanish division, for around 30 million euros (R$192 million in current values).

“In football, management has to be impeccable, sustainable, I think this is the new requirement of modern football. In Spain, the rules are strict and there are rules, in Brazil they don’t… But it seems that the horizon for Brazilian football is going to change a lot,” he said in an interview with Flow podcast earlier this month.

At the Spanish club, even on vacation Ronaldo is informed about everything that happens in the team by Matthieu Fenaert, CEO of Valladolid.

“[Ronaldo tem] all influence. I was very surprised. We have daily meetings and he stays on top of everything. Even when he’s on vacation, he gets a report every morning. Ronaldo knows everything that is decided,” Fenaert told leaf in 2019.

But not everything is a bed of roses. This year, the five-time world champion with the national team was the target of protests from fans of Valladolid after the team’s relegation to the Spanish second division. Banners blaming him for the fall were placed near the José Zorrilla stadium.

Before that, he had an unsuccessful experience with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, the US club he was a member of from 2014 to 2016.

Currently, Ronaldo lives intensely the day-to-day life of Valladolid and at least until now he is divided between his houses in the city and in Madrid. Belo Horizonte should be part of that circuit starting this Saturday.

The scorer three times voted best in the world prepared to be a businessman and had already shown an appetite to open up new market niches.

In 2013, he spent a few months in London to do an internship with Sir Martin Sorrell, president of WPP, one of the largest advertising companies on the planet, valued at R$35 billion. Sorrell had a stake in 9ine, an agency opened by the striker in Brazil when he was still playing for Corinthians.

It was a time when Ronaldo was already getting sponsorship contracts for other clubs, through his company, and managing the careers of other athletes.

One of the contracts was that of Hypermarcas with Corinthians itself. Realizing the power of social media, he was one of the first famous names in the football world to partner with a private company for his Twitter account. The agreement was with Claro.

Today he is in charge of ODDZ Network, a holding of companies that have Octagon as a marketing arm and want to unite sports, technology and entertainment, and prepares projects in the data market, e-Sports, management, sports experiences and production of audiovisual content.

The attacker also has an NGO, Fundação Fenômenos, and R9 Gestão Patrimonial e Financeira, for high-performance athletes.