"I hope it has a positive impact," Ronaldinho said after signing for Ravenna FC. That's typically PR boilerplate, but when you're a Ballon d'Or winner pulling on a Serie C shirt in your mid-forties, the line carries a different weight.
The Brazilian legend has officially ended his retirement, signing with Ravenna — a club of 12,000-capacity modesty nestled in Emilia-Romagna — more than a decade after his last competitive appearance for Fluminense in 2015. He is 46 years old. The division is Italy's third tier. None of that seems to bother him.
The man behind the signing
Ravenna's owner Ignazio Cipriani bought the club in 2024 with one stated ambition: reach Serie A. Landing Ronaldinho is less a football move than a statement of intent. "I think just having him with us is going to make Ravenna a much bigger club," Cipriani said. "It gave us an extreme level of PR that we wouldn't have had otherwise."
He's not wrong. A club that most football fans outside Italy couldn't place on a map is now a global talking point. For Ravenna's promotion push, that kind of visibility has real value — sponsorship, attendance, momentum. The football itself is almost secondary.
Cipriani grew up watching Ronaldinho and credits him with making a generation fall in love with the game. Signing him is personal as much as strategic. "It was always a dream and an inspiration to play like him," he said. The two have been friends for years, which is how the deal came together so smoothly.
What this actually means on the pitch
The honest answer is: we don't know yet. Ronaldinho hasn't played club football competitively since 2015. He's been active in charity matches and five-a-side events, but Serie C is a real, physical league — and it will ask questions his body hasn't had to answer in a very long time.
Ravenna's promotion odds won't move on the back of this signing alone. What it does is put eyeballs on every match they play. If Ronaldinho can contribute even glimpses of his old self — the vision, the dribbling, that left foot — this story writes itself all season long.
He posed for photos with the jersey draped over his 2005 Ballon d'Or trophy before signing it. It was a smart visual. The trophy did the explaining so he didn't have to.
