With a bad start to the year, Ronaldo still believes in Cruzeiro’s improvement

Ronaldo’s career as manager of Cruzeiro’s SAF (Sociedade Anônima do Futebol) has been marked by ups and downs since he took office in April 2022. The beginning of 2023 has been difficult for the traditional team from Minas Gerais, but the former player has expressed his optimism in relation to Cruzeiro’s year during the course of the season.

With the elimination in the semifinals of the Campeonato Mineiro against América, in addition to the recent defeat by Náutico (1 to 0) in the first leg of the Copa do Brasil and the poor performances, Cruzeiro’s performance is quite worrying so far. Coupled with the bad phase, the Celeste club has a very negative mark in 2023: it currently has the worst performance among the clubs in the first division of the Brazilian Championship, which is another point that gives a very negative margin for the future of the club. .

_{Ronaldo, current manager of SAF Cruzeirense. (Photo: Reproduction/Toda Bahia)}

Despite the recent numbers, Ronaldo made it clear that even with the maintenance of Cruzeiro in the first division as the first goal, the club can indeed dream of something more during the year. In an interview given to Betfair, the former striker showed confidence in the entire development of the project:

Our first and clear objective is to remain in the first division. We are going to compete in a tough championship with teams with a bigger budget than ours, but I am quite confident that we will be able to be strong and exceed expectations to get a place in the Sudamericana or, who knows, in the 2024 Libertadores. the titles of the championships that we enter to dispute (the Copa do Brasil and the Brasileirão). Sooner or later, we will definitely manage to win titles, we are going through a restructuring process, where we inherited many problems from the past, but with all certainty Cruzeiro will compete for titles.

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The now manager already played for Cruzeiro as a player: from 1994 to 1994, the still young striker scored an incredible 44 goals in 47 games with the Celeste shirt before making a name for himself in European football. Currently, Ronaldo, in addition to Cruzeiro, also has a stake (in this case, being the owner) of the Spanish club Valladolid.

Featured Photo: Ronaldo and Cruzeiro live a complicated relationship, largely due to the team’s fragile performance that year. (Photograph: Gustavo Aleixo/Cruzeiro)