Superstar footballer Cristiano Ronaldo is to visit the White House on Thursday, a US official has confirmed – the same day as the leader of Saudi Arabia where the Portuguese currently plays the game.
The footballer is not believed to have been to the US since 2016, when he visited Las Vegas.
In the interim he has faced an allegation of sexual assault. Kathryn Mayorga alleged that Ronaldo raped her in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2009, which he denied.
“I firmly deny the accusations being issued against me. Rape is an abominable crime that goes against everything that I am and believe in,” he said in a statement in 2018.
In 2019, US prosecutors said Ronaldo would not face charges because the claims could not be proven.
The White House official did not say Ronaldo was part of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s official delegation.
However his starring role in the Saudi football league has seen him become a face of the country’s modernisation drive under the crown prince, the country’s de-facto ruler, who wants to reduce the country’s dependence on oil revenues by diversifying into other areas including sports and tourism.
In early 2023, Ronaldo made the jump to Saudi Arabia when he became the face of the Saudi Pro League and captain of Al Nassr – the football club owned by sovereign wealth fund PIF which is chaired by the crown prince.
In an industry where players are paid extraordinary amounts of money, Ronaldo’s pay deal with Saudi Arabia was astronomical. The footballer was reportedly paid $200m (£152m) a year – or more than half a million dollars a day.
Then in June this year, he signed a new two-year deal for a reported total of $400m (£300m) and became football’s first billionaire player, according to Bloomberg, with a net worth of $1.4bn.
That’s a lot of money for a 40-year-old footballer in the twilight of his career.
But, according to Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, Saudi Arabia has “invested heavily in high profile events and individuals to put the kingdom on the map” in terms of sports and tourism in its quest for modernism.
Ronaldo has referred to Prince Mohammed as “our boss” in an interview with broadcaster Piers Morgan.
Earlier this month, he appeared at a Ministry of Tourism event in Riyadh where he talked up the kingdom’s development projects and his hopes for the 2034 FIFA World Cup being held in Saudi Arabia.
As for meeting Trump, Vakil says: “The US president likes shiny things and Ronaldo is a shiny thing.”
Though the footballer has loftier ambitions for the meeting in Washington – world peace.
In July, European Council president Antonio Costa handed Trump a Portugal jersey signed by Ronaldo which read: “To president Donald J. Trump, Playing for Peace.”
He told Morgan: “I hope to sit down with him someday because he’s one of those people I really like.
“I think he can make things happen and I respect people like that.”
