Ronaldo confirmed Juventus interest in January

Cristiano Ronaldo moved to Juventus in July, but the former Real Madrid forward apparently had his eyes on Turin before then.

Ronaldo, 33, left Real Madrid for Italy in a stunning €112-million deal in July, just after helping the Spanish giants to a third consecutive Champions League triumph.

The five-time Ballon d’Or winner has settled in seamlessly at Juve, scoring 11 Serie A goals and 12 in all competitions, and Cristiano’s agent, Mendes, claims talks to send Ronaldo to Turin were under way at the beginning of the year.

Indeed, Mendes says he spoke with Juve’s hierarchy, including sporting director Fabio Paratici and president Andrea Agnelli, before they faced Madrid in the Champions League quarter-finals.

‘He is the best player in the history of the game, so a lot of teams wanted him,’ Mendes said via Tuttosport. ‘Even so, Juve deserve a lot of credit for making this deal happen.

‘Cristiano told me back in January that he wanted to join the Bianconeri. At that moment in time, I did not think that a deal would be possible, but I guess that I was wrong.

‘I met up with Paratici and [vice-chairman Pavel] Nedved before the Juve-Real game in Turin [in April] and I then met up with Agnelli, too. That’s when I started to believe that a deal was possible.

Mendes added that negotiations over the deal lasted ‘two or three months’.

Ronaldo scored Juve’s 5,000th Serie A goal in their 1-0 victory at neighbours Torino last week, but the Portugal forward is set to be rested against either Roma, Atalanta or Sampdoria before the turn of the year.