Before making a move to Real Madrid, the young Cristiano Ronaldo was almost a part of Malaga.
The Spanish club, however, were not able to acquire him – they fell short of 2 million euros of the asking price.
“Cristiano was what he is now as a young man,” Rincon told El Desmarque . “A player with a very important physical power, with a spectacular strike of the ball.
“At that time I had great confidence with the president and everything I advised really made it effective.
“I was told to go to the big events in Europe, America or South Africa. I had to get the phone numbers of the three best players in the tournaments.
“As soon as the championship ended I had the phone number of the three best players. I was then following them on television, I was not going [to the games].
“The following week we established contact with players and families to meet their agents and see if we could make an offer.
“Within that situation was Ronaldo,” he adds. “He had not yet debuted in the first team of Sporting in Lisbon, and we made an offer through Jorge Mendes.
“We had established money, we could not make overexertion in investments. At that time we made an offer of €1.5m and the player was worth about €3.5m.
“We could not move on because we couldn’t reach that amount. In the end good players are not expensive, but we couldn’t get there.”
Imagine if he was in Malaga now!
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