Cristiano Ronaldo casting doubts over his Real Madrid future certainly caused a stir.

After all, it’s not often that the holder of the Ballon d’Or wants to leave arguably the biggest club in the world. It certainly got Manchester United fans giddy, at least for a week or two.

However, rather unsurprisingly in hindsight, reports of an exit have now died down and Ronaldo looks settle to remain at the Bernabeu. Perhaps with the small matter of 406 goals in Spain, he didn’t fancy changing the winning formula in the end.

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You would think at this point that clubs, most of which were already priced out of a move, would have given up on their chase of CR7. That isn’t exactly the case, though.

One side not wanting to give up on the case is AC Milan who have been spending money like it’s going out of fashion this summer. The Rossoneri have already procured Hakan Calhanoglu, Andre Silva and even Leonardo Bonucci.

Throw in their other seven captures and that’s a dizzying €175 million worth of spending.

A move for Ronaldo would blow all those moves out of the water, though, and aware of this, Milan are trying to play a clever game. They know the 32-year-old’s future plans as well as most but aren’t allowing that to defeat them.

In fact, one way or another, the club have managed to secure a meeting with Ronaldo’s agent this summer.

According to Sky Italia, and as retold by the Mirror, Jorge Mendes met with Milan’s general manager Marco Fassone and sporting director Mirabelli in London.

Ronaldo was said to be a topic of conversation and one request that Milan made was for them to be informed when the forward wants to leave Real. It’s certainly a fair demand and one that keeps their hopes high but grounded too.

Nevertheless, the report concedes that the suggestion may have been meant jovially but it’s hard to see Milan joking around if a chance presented itself.

Under their new owners, there would certainly be the financial resources at hand and their summer activity shows they are willing to use it. It is estimated that a move for Ronaldo, including wages, would cost between £350m and £450m.

For the moment, though, Los Blancos seem to have retained their star asset ahead of season number three under Zinedine Zidane. And judging by their performance against Manchester City, they’ll be hotly anticipating his return.

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