RONALDO TO REVEAL REAL PLANS SOON

Real Madrid will meet Cristiano Ronaldo at the start of next week to discuss the striker’s future, a club executive said yesterday.

The Spanish champions have not spoken to their star player after discovering through Portuguese media that he wanted to leave the club because of allegations against him that he evaded 14.7-million (about R218-million) in tax.

“Cristiano Ronaldo’s future will be key to the club’s sporting plans for next season and it’s something we have to solve as soon as possible,” the executive said.

“We haven’t heard his intentions. We count on him, but we have to know what it is he wants.”

Ronaldo, 32, was eliminated with Portugal from the Confederations Cup in Russia on penalties by Chile at the semi-final stage on Wednesday.

Although his country will feature in the third-place play-off, the Portuguese football federation released him so he can travel to meet his twins, born during the tournament to a surrogate mother.

Madrid want Ronaldo to enjoy a few days rest before addressing the topic of his future on Monday or Tuesday, when president Florentino Perez will learn about Ronaldo’s intentions first hand.

For the moment Madrid have frozen incoming and outgoing transfer operations because their plans depend on what their star player will do.

In 2016-17 Ronaldo enjoyed arguably his best season with Real Madrid, leading them to a league and Champions League double.

A few days after lifting Madrid’s 12th European Cup, Spain’s tax authorities accused the four-time Ballon d’Or winner of fraud related to his image rights between 2011 and 2014. Three days later the Portuguese media revealed that Ronaldo felt attacked by the Spanish tax authorities and had decided to leave Real Madrid and La Liga. – dpa; Picture: Reuters