Greatest Of All Legends

**24th May 2021**

The season was over for most football teams in the world, except for the leagues with a different calendar, however, for Uventus and Bayern Munich, the season was not yet over.

Uventus had won every title available to them so far this year while Bayern, coming off a sextuple in the previous calendar year, had won all but two trophies so far this year.

At the Uventus training ground, the players were already hard at training. The day doubled as a recovery day for the players who had played in the last game, as well as an intensive training day for the more energized players.

The manager had set up the previous day's lineup with this in mind, keeping in mind that his players had to keep training intensively for the upcoming Champions League finals.

However, though the players could be seen all over the training ground, either doing intensive training, pumping iron at the gym, or doing light exercises to help with the recovery, the manager and his assistant coaches were nowhere to be seen.

Pirlo and the assistant coaches had another engagement for the day, namely the club's recruitment focus meeting for the upcoming season.

At the head office at the Allianz stadium, the meeting room was full with the heavyweights of the club as this was no ordinary recruitment meeting.

Since the season was over, the club had to begin preparing for the upcoming season and the transfer window before the season began was a very big part of it.

The budget had to be decided and the club had to decide on how best to use their already accumulated funds or incoming funds they had yet to receive.

Seated at the head of a long polished table that gleamed in the light was the club's chairman and seated at other seats were the manager, the assistant coaches, sporting director, chief scout, head of recruitment, finance director, communications director, a legal department representative, and some data analysts.

The meeting had begun with the declaration of all the prize money the club was to receive, but despite it being good news, it was but a prelude to the chaos that was about to happen in the room.

"Moving on to players leaving the club," the sporting director who was chairing the meeting began.

"Like we already decided, we will not be offering Buffon a new contract. His current contract period runs out at the end of this month, freeing up some space in our wage budget,"

"Bentacur and Kulusevski have gained the attention of other clubs and we may be losing them in the coming transfer window," he continued.

"That's fine, we can use the funds gained from their transfer to invest back into the team," Pirlo muttered, but no one responded to his words as it was something they all agreed on.

"Mckennie's loan will be ending, but as already decided, we will be paying the agreed fee to retain him. He's been very instrumental for us," the sporting director began again, his words eliciting a nod from Pirlo.

"For Morata, we'll be renewing his loan as we need a striker of his caliber in front and we don't have the excess funds to make any big transfers yet," this time, a slight frown appeared on Pirlo's face as he began to get a bad feeling.

"Finally, we will be sending out promising players from the youth squad and the other under-squads on loans to ensure they get more first-team experience,"

Taking a deep breath, the sporting director sipped from his glass of water, about to move onto the next topic.

"Before we continue to other issues, Pirlo," the sporting director said, glancing at the chairman at the head of the table before his eyes refocused on Pirlo.

"We will be looking to arrange a transfer out of the club for Ronaldo," the sportig director's words were like a bomb in Pirlo's ear.

"What!? Why!?" Pirlo asked in confusion.

"It's simple, finances," the finance director said before the sporting director could reply.

"But we have the prize money from all those competitions, don't we?" Pirlo argued, slamming a fist onto the table.

"It doesn't cut it," the finance director retorted immediately.

"I don't have to spell out to you how the lockdown period affected us, do I?"

"After taking loans to bring Ronaldo to the club, we had barely begun breaking even and began paying back the loan when we had to go on a lockdown period,"

"Even after making the players take pay cuts and postponing some of their wages, we took loans to pay the wages"

"We barely began making some money from ticket sales at the beginning of this year, but we still have those loans,"

"Luckily for us, we've won a lot this year, thanks to your efforts so we can offset some of those loans, but then we still owe the players quite a bit,"

"Ronaldo's wages is about 31 million euros per season and we are currently owing him 16 million euros. That's more than half our prize money as winners of the Serie A this season!" the finance director exclaimed.

"If we want to ensure that we have enough funds to improve the squads, then he may have to go," the sporting director added.

"But he's the best player we have! If we don't have him next season, our attack takes a huge dent and we will struggle," Pirlo countered.

"Not if we invest the funds into bringing in other attackers… who demand a much lower wage. We already have a few options to consider," the sporting director retorted.

"But this-! Mr. Chairman, surely we can't just let him go like this. He is not only useful on the pitch, I'm sure he brings in a lot of revenue for the club," Pirlo turned to the chairman, hoping he could stop this.

"... He does bring in a lot of revenue for the club… but other high-profile players could do just as well. If we didn't have that lockdown period which threw our finances into a mess, I would consider keeping him, but as it is, we stand more to lose than we stand to gain," the chairman said slowly.

"But we don't! WE stand a lot to gain! There aren't many players out there who can bring us this much results and the few that are out there would demand a lot from us to bring them to the club,"

"We already have Ronaldo, we can recover in other areas," Pirlo still refused to give up.

"I didn't agree a hundred percent to sell him, but you have to think about these things, Pirlo. We brought him to the club to help us win the Champions League and as you can see, we are in the finals. It's not a failed investment as far as I am concerned,"

"If he wins the trophy, then good for him, we get more prize money and he can stick around if we find a way to manage our finances, but if he doesn't win it this season, I doubt if he can keep playing at this level for long, he's old now,"

"Better to get rid of him quicker, rather than later," the chairman delivered his final judgement.