Yahoo Sports Ex-Juventus president slams Cristiano Ronaldo’s pool pictures amid coronavirus pandemic
Just before all of Italy shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Juventus allowed Cristiano Ronaldo to travel back home to Portugal to be with his mother after she suffered a stroke earlier this month.
Now, former Juventus president Giovanni Gigli isn’t happy with the soccer star — especially after pictures of Ronaldo lounging by a pool surfaced.
The rest of his team is in isolation, too, after several Juventus players tested positive for the coronavirus.
“Things at Juventus got complicated when Cristiano Ronaldo left,” Gigli said on Radio Punto Nuovo, via Goal.com. “He said he was going to Portugal because of his mother, but now he only appears to be taking pictures by the pool. When the exception was made for him, things fell apart and others wanted to leave but it shouldn’t have been like this.
“They all should have been quarantined.”
Italy has been one of the hardest-hit countries in the world amid the pandemic. The country had more than 80,500 confirmed cases of the virus as of Thursday afternoon, the third-highest number in the world behind the United States and China, and more than 8,000 deaths according to The New York Times. The entire country has essentially been locked down.
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Ronaldo has certainly done his part to help during the coronavirus pandemic. The 35-year-old donated €1 million to hospitals in Portugal to help fight the virus, and even took part in Nike’s latest ad campaign encouraging people to practice social distancing and stay home.
Yet once Ronaldo left, several of his teammates were then allowed to leave Italy to return home to their families too.
The decision to leave the team, Gigli said, doesn’t make any sense.
“Criticizing now is easy, but from the outside I don’t know why players wanted to leave Italy,” Gigli said, via Goal.com. “When they return it’ll be more difficult to get back in shape because they’ll have to stay in quarantine for 14 days.”
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