Liverpool turned down chance to sign future Ballon d'Or winner who sold for over £80m

Liverpool turned down the chance to sign Cristiano Ronaldo due to concerns about wage structure. The Portuguese icon would later carve out a five-time Ballon d'Or-winning career with Manchester United and Real Madrid, with the 69th edition of the award set to be handed out on Monday night.

Back in 2003, a teenage Ronaldo was one of Europe's most in-demand starlets, having built up a glittering reputation with Sporting CP. Top sides came calling, and it was Sir Alex Ferguson's Red Devils who completed a deal, snapping up Ronaldo for just £12m.

In 2009, he left Old Trafford for a then-world record £80million, and over 15 years later, Ronaldo is debatably the greatest player to ever play the game. He has scored almost 950 goals for Portugal and the likes of United, Real Madrid and Juventus, won countless accolades, and been named the best player in the world on five occasions.

However, Ronaldo's legendary career could have taken a vastly different direction had United's bitter rivals Liverpool been the ones to bring him to the Premier League. Late former Reds manager Gerard Houllier admitted that such a landscape-changing move was on the cards, only for it to be scuppered by wage concerns.

"I saw him in the Toulon Under-21 tournament and we went for him," admitted Houllier, who held the reins at Anfield from 1998 until 2004 before his death in 2020. "But we had a wage scale and we weren't paying the sort of salary he wanted.

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"Then Manchester United played a friendly against Sporting Lisbon and all their boys said to Alex Ferguson, 'You have to sign him'. But I agreed with not breaking the wage structure. I thought it would cause problems in our dressing room.

"Maybe we would have won the title with Ronaldo, but we had Harry Kewell, who was outstanding at the time and was very hungry, but got a bad injury. After that, he never had the same confidence, the same appetite."

Houllier's assistant, Phil Thompson, also previously explained how the contracts of new French players Florent Sinama Pongolle and Anthony Le Tallec led them to hesitate at Ronaldo's demands.

"We had just signed Florent Sinama Pongolle and Anthony Le Tallec, both on far less than Ronaldo's aspirations," admitted Thompson. "And we would have had anarchy if the other players had found out how much we were considering paying for an 18-year-old kid. We looked for a compromise.

"Ten days later I was sitting in a lounge at Anfield having some lunch and looking at the big TV screen. Up came the news United had signed Ronaldo from Lisbon for £12.2m. Gerard and myself nearly choked on our food!"

The Reds have only ever had one Ballon d'Or winner: Michael Owen in 2001. Ronaldo won his first Ballon d'Or while he was strutting his stuff with United in 2008, and after his record £80m move, he added four more to his cabinet in Madrid in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017.

Only Lionel Messi, an eight-time recipient, has won the award more than Ronaldo. Last year, Manchester City's Rodri took it home, with Real Madrid's Vinicius Junior in second.

This time around, with Paris Saint-Germain winning the Champions League, their talismanic Ousmane Dembele is highly favoured to win. Barcelona's Lamine Yamal and team-mate Raphinha are also in contention.

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