'My Man Utd team-mate openly told me in training he's had enough and wants to leave club'

This global superstar let his Manchester United team-mates know that his eyes were only set on Old Trafford's exit door in 2009 before making a then-world record move

Cristiano Ronaldo has never been shy of wearing his heart on his sleeve.

And this is precisely what the Portuguese icon did in 2008 when attempting to force through a move to Real Madrid from Sir Alex Ferguson's purring Manchester United.

Having been scouted in his homeland and taken back to Manchester at 18, Ferguson helped develop a young, naive, and overconfident winger into one of the most lethal forwards the game has ever seen.

Yet, the lights of Old Trafford became a bit dim for Ronaldo in 2009, and, with European heavyweights Real sniffing around, the now-39-year-old informed team-mate Nani that he was done in the Premier League and needed the switch.

"We would stay at the end of training to do competitions and they [Anderson and Ronaldo] were my team-mates, everyone has best friends or some they feel more comfortable with and they were my support," Nani said, recalling his story about Ronaldo.

"Some days he [Ronaldo] was telling us openly, 'I'm here six or seven years now, I think it's enough for me.' He said that a couple of times.

"But it was always, 'I will see, I will see, I will see', but we never thought it [Real Madrid move] would happen so fast. After we won the league in the second year he left, he produced a great season, so we were still surprised."

Ronaldo was long courted before making his historic move, and Ferguson recalled the saga in his autobiography. He cited former Real president Ramon Calderon as the reason for keeping the forward at United for another season before finally giving in.

"Real Madrid paid £80m in cash for him [in 2009], and do you know why? It was a way for Florentino Perez, their president, to say to the world: 'We are Real Madrid. We are the biggest of the lot,'” the Scotsman recalled.

"Ramon Calderon, Perez's predecessor, had claimed the previous year that Cristiano would one day be a Real Madrid player. I went to Carlos Queiroz's house in Portugal to find the boy expressing an urge to go to Real Madrid, and told him: 'You can't go this year, not after the way Calderon has approached this issue'.

"I said: 'I know you want to go to Real Madrid, but I'd rather shoot you than sell you to that guy now. If you perform, don't mess us about, and someone comes and offers a world record fee, then we will let you go.'

"I did well to calm him down. I told him the reason I was refusing to sell him that year was because of Calderon. I said: 'If I do that, my honour's gone, everything's gone for me, and I don't care if you have to sit in the stands. I know it won't come to that, but I just have to tell you I will not let you leave this year.'"

Come the end of the 2009 season, however, Ferguson’s resolve finally and understandably crumbled, and Ronaldo became a Bernabeu-blessing Galactico.

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