Can you imagine Ronaldo wearing the Liverpool shirt? Well that was possible at that time…
Cristiano Ronaldo could be the icon of the Reds today and could have written history with the Liverpool jersey, not Manchester United.
Former Reds coach Gerard Houllier has revealed how Liverpool failed to transfer Ronaldo after his assistant Phil Thompson revealed earlier this month that they were very close to buying Ronaldo.
“Phil is right that we failed to transfer him.” he said.
“In 2002, when I was sick, we decided to take Ronaldo and Ricardo Quaresman, the Sporting CP duo. They just won the Toulon tournament with Portugal and were very good on the wing.”
“We followed Cristiano for a year, but we stopped for a while because of the salary level, it was bigger than what we could do for Ronaldo.”
“There was a salary limit at Liverpool and Michael Owen just won the Ballon d’Or. You can not give a 17-year-old a salary higher than that.”
“I had a lot of contact with Cristiano, but Manchester United played a friendly against Lisbon. Sporting won 3-1, Cristiano scored two goals (Ronaldo did not score in that match) and all the United players asked Ferguson to buy him.
“His price went from 4 million to 13 million and we could not reach him.”
“Maybe our recruiter should have said yes right away, but he wanted to be sure not to make a mistake.”
