Juventus defender Giorgio Chiellini has criticised Cristiano Ronaldo over the way his exit from the club was handled by all parties involved.
The Portuguese superstar didn’t make his high profile move to Manchester United until Deadline Day this summer, which gave Max Allegri and the Juve board little to no time to react.
As Chiellini claims, had Ronaldo announced his intentions to leave the club earlier in the summer, The Old Lady could have lined up a replacement to be brought in upon his exit.
Juventus got off to a dire start in Serie A this season, winning just one of their first five games. According to the Italian defender, part of this form slump could easily be attributed to the uncertainly surrounding Ronaldo’s move.
“We paid something for it, a little bit of a shock, we paid something for it in terms of points. If he had left earlier we would have had time to prepare better.”
While Juventus do now have Alvaro Morata and Moise Kean to rely on in terms of striker options, at the start of the season that wasn’t the case.
The Spaniard had an injury in the opening weeks of the campaign, while the mercurial Paulo Dybala was also sidelined.
However, as Chiellini attests to, the issue with Ronaldo’s exit wasn’t just the fact that they were losing the Serie A top scorer without lining up a replacement.
On the contrary, the main issue was the surprising nature of the move, as it seemingly caught the club off-guard.
The 36-year-old didn’t announce his intentions to leave Juventus until mid-August, so its likely that the talisman wanting to leave did have a psychological impact on the players – as the Euro 2020 winner alludes to.
