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AUTOMOBILE WORKERS STRIKE OVER FIAT’S SPENDING ON JUVENTUS’ RONALDO

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Not everyone is crazy about football or the iconic Ronaldo after all. Workers at a Fiat Chrysler plant in Italy are to strike after its main investor decided to pay €112m (£99.2m) to sign footballer Cristiano Ronaldo for Juventus.

Both the football club and the car maker are controlled by the Agnelli family through their holding company.

For the USB union, the decision means Fiat is missing out on investment.

It said the firm needed to guarantee the future of thousands of people, “rather than enriching only one”.

The union added that it was “unacceptable” that while Fiat Chrysler workers were making “huge economic sacrifices”, millions of euros were being spent on the purchase of a player.

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The four-year deal to woo Ronaldo from Real Madrid was announced on Tuesday amid concern that Juventus might have overpaid for the 33-year-old forward.

However, football finance expert Rob Wilson, of Sheffield Hallam University, said Juventus should earn more than enough money from Ronaldo to cover the transfer fee and his wages.

He added: “The marketing leverage that Juventus will be able to create will be significant.

“Added to that the likelihood that he will strengthen the team, it seems plausible that they will be more successful domestically and qualify routinely for the Champions League. That means more sponsors, more TV money and more prize money.”

Meanwhile,Juan Cuadrado has welcomed Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus by handing his new team-mate the No 7 shirt he wore last season.

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His CR7 branding has become iconic, and Juve chiefs were spared an awkward situation when Cuadrado opted to voluntarily hand over the shirt number.

Juan Cuadrado revealed via Instagram that he had handed his No 7 shirt to Cristiano Ronaldo.

On Instagram, Cuadrado said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive blessings.’

Ronaldo, 33, has almost exclusively worn the No 7 shirt for both Manchester United and Real Madrid, wearing No 9 for the Spanish giants in 2009/10 when club legend Raul occupied his preferred number.

A similar thing happened at Paris Saint-Germain in 2017, when Argentine Javier Pastore gifted world-record signing Neymar his No 10 shirt.

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Cuadrado, 30, joined Juventus on loan from Chelsea in 2016 and was issued with No 16 before switching to No 7 when his transfer was made permanent last summer.

Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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