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LONDON. – Cristiano Ronaldo says he left Real Madrid in the summer because he no longer felt valued by the club and president Florentino Perez.

Ronaldo won 16 trophies, including four Champions League soccer titles, during a glittering nine-year spell with Real where he scored 450 goals, becoming the club’s record goalscorer. The Portugal captain joined Juventus in July in a deal worth around £105m and Ronaldo has dismissed the notion that his move to Turin was driven by money.

“He (Perez) only ever looked at me as a business relationship. I know it. What he told me never came from the heart,” Ronaldo said in an interview with France Football.

“I felt it inside the club, especially from the president, that they no longer considered me the same way that they did in the start. In the first four or five years there, I had the feeling of being ‘Cristiano Ronaldo’. Less afterwards.

“The president looked at me through eyes that didn’t want to say the same thing, as if I was no longer indispensable to them, if you know what I mean. That’s what made me think about leaving.’’ – Sky Sports.