When Cristiano Ronaldo decided to sign for Al-Nassr, it wasn’t just a left-field move for his footballing career.
Ronaldo is much more than just a footballer. He is an extremely wealthy global celebrity with 528m Instagram followers, 159m on Facebook and 106m on Twitter. He is a gigantic and influential commercial entity in his own right. He is as focused on football as he is on building his empire off the pitch.
In that sense, his move to Riyadh was the most significant of his career to date. Ronaldo has previously been operating in the same market, simply swapping European giant for European giant by moving between Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus. A jump to Al-Nassr is a major departure from his established pattern.
