Real Madrid legend Cristiano Ronaldo offered to give up money if it meant that his close friend Pepe didn’t leave the club, as revealed by the defender to Renascença in Portugal.
Both players have since moved on from the Bernabeu, with Pepe retiring at Porto in 2024 while Ronaldo, who turned 40 this week, is still plying his trade at Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia.
Once upon a time, though, in the 2010s, the compatriots were protagonists in a Madrid outfit that won four Champions League titles and Pepe shared a story from the time he was set to leave in 2017 in an interview with the Portuguese media.
“I spoke to him a lot and he told me to stay at Real Madrid. But I think my time at the club had already arrived, because they were 10 years of great demand, where I gave up a lot of time. I tried to explain to him that I could no longer be there due to the difficulties I was having at the time,” Pepe recalled.
Pepe explained how Ronaldo said: ‘If it’s about money, man, I’ll leave mine to give to you’.
“And I told him no, thank God it’s not because of that, it’s because of other issues. I also wanted to experience football again and that’s why I decided to go to Turkey,” added Pepe, who in his last season had been mostly benched thanks to the rise of Raphael Varane under Zinedine Zidane.
Pepe also shed light on what happened between former Portugal coach Fernando Santos and Ronaldo at the 2022 World Cup when the latter was also left out of the starting line up.
“Internally, Cristiano was always very professional, he didn’t compromise the group at any time. There was a lot of talk about it in the press and we are not immune, it reached all the players. Obviously no player likes to be left out,” Pepe said.
“We want to bring joy to our people. I think it was more the sadness that this did not happen, for Cris, than the other situation itself. Then there is a lot of speculation about what the relationship is (between them), if it is good or not. I think it was up to the coach and Cris…”, the Brazil-born center back trailed off.