Brazil great Ronaldinho said he hopes he can score his 300th career goal after announcing a comeback at the age of 46 at Italian third-tier side Ravenna.<\/p>\n
Thousands of fans gathered at a city beach for an event dubbed “Ronaldinho Day”, enduring rain to witness the unveiling of the former Paris St-Germain, Barcelona and AC Milan playmaker, who retired from playing in 2015. <\/p>\n
“I’m very happy to be here with friends, we have a team that can do something good,” said Ronaldinho, who will become a shareholder in the Serie C side.<\/p>\n
“Will you see me play? I don’t know, only the coach knows that. Coming back to Italy is wonderful, I’m here to help my teammates win.<\/p>\n
“As you can see, I’m in shape, I feel good… If I could score my 300th goal, that would be even more beautiful.”<\/p>\n
Ronaldinho ended his career in September 2015 when he played his last official match with Brazilian club Fluminense.<\/p>\n
He won the World Cup in 2002, scoring the winning goal in the quarter-final against England, and the Ballon d’Or in 2005.<\/p>\n
The forward’s comeback was first announced in June by Ignazio Cipriani, an Italian-American businessman and owner of the club since 2024, while he was attending the World Cup in Miami.<\/p>\n
“His objective is romantic, to try to score his last goal,” said Cipriani on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“His involvement is not a token gesture or a marketing stunt to get people talking about us.”<\/p>\n
Cipriani added that Ronaldinho would not play against Reggiana on Monday in the Serie C season opener.<\/p>\n
Ravenna finished third in Group B of last season’s third-tier championship and are seeking a return to Serie B, where they haven’t played since 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brazil great Ronaldinho said he hopes he can score his 300th career goal after announcing a comeback at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-820401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}