Manager Fabio Capello felt that Real Madrid’s three-time FIFA World Player of the Year winner Ronaldo lacked professionalism and was a distraction for others, hence in 2007 the player was sold.

Following his comeback at the World Cup that summer, Ronaldo relocated to Madrid in 2002.

Prior to the competition, he spent three seasons at Inter beset by injuries, during which he made just 24 appearances (not playing at all in 2000–01).

Nevertheless, he was chosen for Brazil’s team and scored eight goals, leading the Selecao to a record-tying sixth World Cup and winning the Golden Boot. That year, he also won his third FIFA title and his second career Ballon d’Or.

At the height of the Galacticos era, Ronaldo joined Madrid the summer following Zinedine Zidane and the year prior to Davd Beckham. Beckham’s new Netflix docuseries explores this time period.

Ronaldo scored 61 goals in his first two seasons back in Spain (he had scored maybe the most in a single year of his career at Barcelona in 1996–97) and added a healthy 24 goals in his third season.

However, as his weight increased and injuries began to plague him in 2005–06, Ronaldo’s influence started to decline. Florentino Perez, the president of Madrid, had not achieved the kind of success he had planned for, and the Galacticos era was also breaking and ending.

After rehiring the famed disciplinarian Capello and signing Ruud van Nistelrooy by 2006, it was announced that Ronaldo would be leaving the team during the January transfer window of 2007.

Speaking at the University Institute of Linguistic Mediators, Capello stated, “I decided to fire Ronaldo Nazario in 2007 because he liked to party and got the group involved in going out with him,” via AS.

“It smells like alcohol here in the locker room, sir,” Van Nistelrooy said to me one day, and he was right. That year, Ronaldo weighed 94 kg. He weighed eighty-two at the 2002 World Cup in Korea. After I advised him to lose weight, he hit 92.5.

After deciding to sign with AC Milan, Ronaldo’s European career came to an end a year later due to yet another serious knee injury. Capello, who oversaw the Italian team for the majority of the 1990s, acknowledged that he had even attempted to dissuade them from signing Ronaldo.

“One day, [Silvio] Berlusconi called me to ask for my opinion on a fictitious Ronaldo purchase. I told him he was a party animal and that all he thought about was being around ladies, so I told him not to do that,” Capello remembered.

“He said, ‘All right, thanks, Fabio.'” Ronaldo ignored me when he signed with Milan a day later.”