Why Bayern Munich rejected Cristiano Ronaldo

Update — June 25th/3:00AM EST: Uh, yeah, so about why Bayern Munich doesn’t want Ronaldo

According to Sky Sport (as captured by @iMiaSanMia), Cristiano Ronaldo would have blown up the club’s wage structure, is too old, is unwilling to press, and could have jeopardized team chemistry. Other than that, I am sure he would have been fine, though:

—C.Smith

Update — June 25th / 2:30AM EST: Cristiano Ronaldo was offered to Bayern Munich

So...maybe Bayern Munich was actually offered Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo by his agent. The Bavarians, however, quickly shot it down:

As SPORT1 learned from several well-informed sources within the industry, CR7 was offered to Bayern by his advisors around top agent Jorge Mendes

A move to Germany, where the Portuguese has never played, is said to have been quite interesting for the attacker, according to people close to him. The name was discussed on Säbener Straße, but the bosses around CEO Oliver Kahn and sports director Hasan Salihamidzic quickly lowered their thumbs.

Wouldn’t it have been great to have the video footage of the Bayern Munich brass taking that phone call? Anyway, Bayern Munich sporting director Hasan “Brazzo” Salihamidzic commented on the rumors on Sky (as captured by Metro).

“Cristiano Ronaldo is a top player with an outstanding career. However, stories on potential deal with Bayern are not true,” Salihamidzic said. “These rumors have no truth.”

Was that Brazzo giving Ronaldo the ”It’s not you, it’s me” treatment?

—C.Smith

So let’s get this straight — Diario AS published a report where they claimed Cristiano Ronaldo would be moving from Manchester United to Bayern Munich in order to fill the gap left by the departure of Robert Lewandowski. My editor won’t like that huge sentence but it’s shortest way possible to describe this mess.

So — is Bayern Munich planning to sign Cristiano Ronaldo?

Uh, no. Not at all. Not even in the slightest.

Sky Sports journalist Florian Plettenberg, who was the first to break news of the Sadio Mane saga and has generally been spot-on with all his transfer takes this summer, had this to say about the Ronaldo rumors:

Here is the AS report he was responding to, by the way:

If it still matters, Bild's Christian Falk also thinks Bayern will not sign Ronaldo this summer:

Falk hasn’t been anywhere near as reliable this window as he used to be, but we have no reason to doubt his reporting on this. Why would Bayern sign Ronaldo? It doesn't make any sense. Then again he DID say the Mane news was untrue, and that seemed almost as unlikely at the time, sooooo ... let’s just ignore him for now. No need to overthink it.

Basically, according to unreliable sources, Bayern want CR7 this summer. But according to (mostly) reliable sources, Bayern will not sign CR7 this summer. Seems conclusive, but what do I know? Transfer rumors can be weird even at the best of times.