Cristiano Ronaldo 'crumbled the rules' in Juventus' dressing room

  /  autty

Cristiano Ronaldo may have left Juventus almost two months ago but the fallout continues as more criticisms of the iconic No 7 surface by his former team-mates.

Ronaldo left the Italian giants on August 31 to return to Manchester United in a £19.7million transfer - a deal that happened three games into Juventus' season.

A cloud over Ronaldo's future in Turin coincided with a bad run of form with the Serie A outfit only winning one of their opening four matches in all competitions.

Since then Juve have enjoyed a nine-game unbeaten run - triumphing in eight of those fixtures.

And veteran centre-back pairing Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini have attributed their upturn in fortunes due to the looming of presence of Ronaldo not being there.

Delving further, Italian publication Tuttosport report that it was a case of one rule for Ronaldo and another for the rest among the Bianconeri.

They state Ronaldo 'crumbled' the rules inside the Juventus dressing room, which are made of equity, unity and humility.

This stance affected the team on-and-off the pitch - and was a contributing factor to their poor start to the campaign.

Ronaldo's attacking qualities can't be questioned, as his 101 goals in 134 games for the club attest to, but his lack of defensive effort for the team in terms of tracking back and adapting to the team spirit were reportedly noticed.

Speaking recently Chiellini told DAZN: 'Ronaldo left on August 28 and it certainly would've been better if he had gone earlier so we could prepare. Unfortunately, we paid a price for that.

'It does create a shock to the system and we lost points in the opening games because of that. If he'd left on August 1, then we would've had time to reorganise and be ready for the start of the season.'

Chiellini's comments echoed sentiments by Bonucci just weeks beforehand about Ronaldo.

'Cristiano's presence had a big influence on us. Just training with him gave us something extra but subconsciously players started to think his presence alone was enough to win games,' he told The Athletic.

'We began to fall a little short in our daily work, the humility, the sacrifice, the desire to be there for your teammate day after day. Over the last few years, I think you could see that.'

Related: Manchester United Juventus Ronaldo Bonucci Chiellini
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