Joga Bonito in Ravenna: Inside Ronaldinho’s Shock Serie C Move
Unpacking Ignazio Cipriani's bold plan to make a historic city fall back in love with calcio wit the help of a World Cup winner
Hello and welcome to the Friday edition of Goalazzo! Italian football has long been partial to extravagant surprises for the sake of publicity to varying degrees.
But even by calcio’s standards, a former Ballon d’Or winner signing for a third division club over a decade after retiring sounds positively absurd.
Yet that is exactly what happened this week when Ronaldinho signed for Ravenna, in Miami of all places.
Yes, former Barcelona and Brazil star Ronaldinho. Yes, Serie C side Ravenna. Yes, Miami.
No, us neither.
Are Ravenna the new Como? Is this just a publicity stunt? And what convinced Ronaldinho to pick a Serie C club?
Ronnie Is Back! No, Really
Heard the one about the former World Cup and Champions League winner signing for a third division club in Italy?
Well you have now.
As of Wednesday, Ronaldinho is officially a Ravenna player.
Yes, that is the 2005 Ballon d’Or winner and, yes, the same man who lifted the 2002 World Cup with Brazil and won 97 caps with the Selecao.
Yes, the same player who won two LaLiga titles with Barcelona and the Scudetto with AC Milan.
That chip over David Seaman. That goal against Chelsea. Same bloke.
And, why yes, that is indeed Ravenna, who finished third in their Serie C group last season.
All of which leads to a host questions, the most obvious and arguably easiest to answer being why?
The friendship between Ronaldinho and Ravenna president Ignazio Cipriani, for a start. And a marketing opportunity for both, for seconds.
Ronaldinho is planning to launch his R10 brand in partnership with Nike, following into the footsteps of Michael Jordan.
Ravenna will be the first club to don the R10 logo above the famous swoosh, much as PSG have done with the “Jumpman” symbol since 2018.
Cipriani, of course, is the main shirt sponsor on the new kit, which is designed by Giorgio Mallone.
If the idea of a relatively soft launch appeals the Brazilian, for Ravenna the benefits of being linked with one of the icons of the game are self-explanatory.
Ronaldinho has 79m followers on Instagram, Ravenna just north of 50,000, double of what they had before Wednesday’s announcement.
Signing the Brazilian is the boldest step yet Cipriani has taken since buying a 50% stake in the club two years ago along with UK-based investment fund Black Duck.
“When I bought the club in 2024, my goal was to make the kids of Ravenna fall in love with football,” Cipriani said in Miami.
“Ronaldinho is the definition of the beautiful game. I don't think any other player inspires a passion for football the way he does, which is why having him on board is an absolute dream for us.”
To suggest the Romagnoli were at a low ebb when Cipriani arrived would be an understatement.
Ravenna had spent 16 years bouncing down the football pyramid, slipping all the way down to Eccellenza - Italian football’s fifth tier - after going bankrupt in 2012.
Cipriani swiftly appointed new management team led by former Milan sporting director Ariedo Braida, who along with Adriano Galliani defined the Rossoneri’s most successful era.
Braida is not the only Rossoneri link within Ravenna’s management structure, either. The club’s head of commercial relations is Lorenzo Tonetti, the man behind Giannino, a historic Milanese restaurant that became an absolute institution for Milan players.
Ronaldinho was a regular during his two-and-a-half seasons at the San Siro, just as he is at Cipriani’s family restaurant in Miami, where he was formally announced as a Ravenna player to a VIP party of 250 people.
Back in Serie C last season courtesy of a repechage, the Giallorossi’s dreams of a second consecutive promotion were vanished by Salernitana in the play-offs quarter-finals.
Implausible as it may sound, Ronaldinho may play a part in Ravenna’s quest for promotion next season.
Cipriani suggested the Brazilian “will play at least once for Ravenna” and will be officially presented with the rest of team on August 21.
To nobody’s surprise, he also admitted Ravenna’s new signing would not take part in pre-season training.
Ronaldinho was somewhat more vague, admitting it “was too early to tell” when he would make his debut.
A man notoriously recalcitrant to train even at his peak, quite the shape a 46-year-old Ronaldinho will be in having retired in 2015 is anyone’s guess.
A degree of cynicism may be healthy, but Cipriani, who grew up in New York, is adamant this is not just an elaborate publicity stunt.
“Ultimately, my goal isn't financial,” he told La Gazzetta dello Sport.
“The decision to bring in Ronaldinho comes from the heart. We want to inspire local kids to fall in love with this sport and with Ravenna’s colours.
“Of course, we’re fully aware that right now everyone is talking about our club.”
Presented to the press in Miami, Ronaldinho posed in the new kit for a photoshoot in Venice - the Italian version, not the Florida one.
The Lagoon setting was far from a casual choice.
It was here that Cipriani’s father Giuseppe Cipriani Jr. launched his restaurant business, which has since expanded to the US with venues in New York and Miami - the same restaurant were Ronaldinho was unveiled.
Long before Cipriani’s father opened his first restaurant, the family had already become an icon in the city.
Cipriani’s great grandfather, Giuseppe Sr., was the owner of the legendary Harry’s Bar in Venice, a favourite haunt of Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles and Aristotle Onassis among others.
Investing in sport runs in the Cipriani family too.
The Ravenna president’s grandfather, Raul Gardini, set up the sailing team Il Moro Di Venezia in 1992 to compete in the America’s Cup.
Skippered by the legendary Paul Cayard, the team won the Louis Vuitton Cup in the same year but lost the America’s Cup to America³.
One of Italy’s leading chemicals tycoon, Gardini was also the man behind volleyball’s meteoric rise in Ravenna, his hometown.
Olimpia Teodora won nine women’s Serie A1 titles in a row following the takeover from Gardini’s Ferruzzi Group in 1981.
Eight years later, the consortium took over the men’s team Porto Ravenna and rebranded it Il Messaggero Volley after the Rome-based newspaper that was owned by the company.
The impact was immediate, as Il Messagero won their first and hitherto last top-flight title in 1991 along with the Coppa Italia. Three consecutive Champions League and two European Super Cups followed in the next three years.
By the early 1990s, as the Tangentopoli scandal dismantled Italy’s political landscape, Gardini’s name remained in the headlines for much darker reasons.
“The Peasant”, as Cipriani’s grandfather was colloquially known, had bought into chemical giant Montedison, merging it with Ferruzzi into Italy’s second-largest industrial group behind only the state-owned oil company, ENI.
His subsequent attempt to join the two companies into a mega-conglomerate called Enimont, swiftly turned into a political and financial quagmire.
Gardini eventually found himself embroiled in the Tangentopoli scandal that effectively decapitated the entire Italian political class in the early 1990s.
Prosecutors accused Enimont of paying £50m worth of bribes to various political parties, famously labelling the payouts the “mother of all bribes”.
Gardini’s death by suicide in 1993 in Milan shocked Italy and marked the dark, tragic climax of the Tangentopoli era.
Yet in Ravenna he remains a deeply legendary, mythic figure—a hometown titan who conquered European industry.
And four decades on since his grandfather made Ravenna Italy’s volley capital, Cipriani is aiming put the city on the map in a footballing sense.
“A new destination”, read the ambitious slogan accompanying the press release of Ronaldinho’s arrival.
And while a maiden promotion to Serie A remains some way off, Ravenna are a relative rarity in Serie C - a club with ambitious owners, who have embraced a modern approach to data and analytics.
A new training centre should be finished by January and the club are hoping to complete refurbishments of the Stadio Bruno Benelli in time for next season.
Are Ravenna looking to follow Como’s path, who went from Serie D to the Champions League in six seasons after being taken over by Indonesia’s Djarum Group?
Promotion to Serie B next term would be the second in three seasons under Cipriani and Black Duck.
“It’s certainly something that makes us proud,” Cipriani told La Gazzetta dello Sport when asked of the comparison with Como.
“The fundamental difference is that our ownership is local and deeply rooted in the community.
“Ravenna is my home, and it has always been my dream to turn every young football fan in the area into a supporter of our hometown club. We still have a lot of work ahead of us.
“Serie A is the ultimate dream, but we’re working to get there without taking any shortcuts.”
Ronaldinho’s arrival may provide an interesting detour if nothing else.
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