Juventus have been ordered to pay their former player, Cristiano Ronaldo, more than €9.7million ($10.35m, £8.3m) plus interest in back wagesby the Italian Football Federation.
According to AFP, the Italian courts announced this on Wednesday.
The Court of Arbitration, to which Ronaldo appealed, “orders Juventus Turin to pay the sum of 9,774,166.66 euros”, plus interest and procedural costs, it stated in its decision.
The sum equates to the difference between the salary actually received by Ronaldo and that which he should have received after tax and other deductions.
The 39-year-old, played for the Italian club between 2018 and 2021 with the back payment related to his agreement with Juventus to defer part of his wages during the Covid pandemic.
Ronaldo, who spent three seasons in Italy with Juventus, 2018-21, before joining Manchester United, 2021-22, and then the Saudi club Al Nassr, was claiming 19.5 million euros but the arbitration panel reduced that by 50 per cent.
Some Juventus players agreed to defer four months’ worth of their salaries in March 2020 and April 2021 as the club were struggling financially, but some individual player agreements were also reached.
The documentation showed that Ronaldo agreed to defer a portion of his wages in an agreement with Juventus, but he was not reimbursed the agreed amount.
Juventus said in a statement on Wednesday that they will “review the decision made by the FIGC arbitration board” and noted that the decision recognised “the absence of fraud” by the club, whose conduct “did not affect” Ronaldo’s willingness to “enter into such a compensation reduction agreement.”
The Italian club added that they had been ordered to make the €9.7m payment due to their “pre-contractual liability” resulting from the “failure of negotiations” with the player.
Contacted by AFP, Juventus declined to comment, but said it would be issuing a statement “shortly”.
The rankings drawn up by the American business magazine Forbes revealed that the five-time Ballon d’Or winner was the world’s highest-paid sportsman in 2023, with $136 million, including $46 million in wages.
Juventus, who are listed on the stock exchange, recorded losses of 123.7 million euros in the 2022-23 financial year, which ran to the end of June, it announced in October.
No provision has been made in the accounts of Italian football’s most successful club, currently third in Serie A, for the payment of this wages backlog.
