Juventus comes under fire for benching Ronaldo

Italian football champions Juventus FC has met with harsh criticism for its star player Cristiano Ronaldo’s non-appearance in a friendly match against the K League All-Star team at Seoul World Cup Stadium in Seoul Friday. The team is belatedly preparing for measures to appease the angry fans.

Juventus is taking the issue seriously and planning to convene a meeting participated by executives to discuss measures, according to observers at home and abroad. In addition, the team has reportedly told TheFasta, the agency responsible for the event with Juventus, that it would send a person to discuss the issue in early August if possible to explain circumstances behind Ronaldo’s no-show to Korean media outlets.

However, now that it turned out that the Italian football club had continuously told lies and altered its words ahead of the match, the Korean fans are not likely to be calmed that easily.

Apparently, Juventus had hastily added a game against the Team K League to fill a gap in its schedule. The team was initially scheduled to hold an event in Beijing after a match in Nanjing on Wednesday, but the plan in Beijing had to be cancelled due to issues that occurred during preparation, and that’s when the team turned its focus to Korea. It was mid-May when Juventus made a request for an exhibition match against the K-League All Stars to TheFasta and the Korea Football Association. It was also Juventus that demanded that they stay in the country only for 12 hours, rejecting an earlier two-night, three-day schedule, citing a need for its players to take a rest. TheFasta said that Juventus insisted on the tight plan despite their dissuasion. The club is known to have received around 4 billion won for its schedule in Korea that lasted just half a day.

Moreover, Juventus manager Maurizio Sarri’s comments in the post-match press conference have also fanned anger among the Korean fans. According to Italy’s local media outlets, the team manager said that he would pay for flight tickets if the fans would come to Italy to watch Ronaldo play.


Won-Joo Lee takeoff@donga.com · Yun-Cheol Jeong trigger@donga.com