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Cristiano Ronaldo will sue Juventus over unpaid salary dating from his time at the club, according to a report from Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport. According to the same report, the current Al-Nassr striker has already spoken to the Turin prosecutor's office about the situation and has decided to take action against his former club. 

The unpaid salary is from the period of time when Juventus, as all soccer clubs did, faced the difficulties of the Covid-19 outbreaks, that forced the clubs to play behind closed doors for most of the 2020-21 season. Juventus took action and in 2020 during the first outbreak agreed with the players to postpone some payments, and the same happened in 2021. The club had to cut costs and this affected players such as Cristiano Ronaldo, who is now set to sue the club for not paying him an amount of over$20 million in that period of time. Other players had similar legal cases with the Italian side, including Paulo Dybala who last year found an agreement with his former club, that paid him around €3 million.

The so-called "salary maneuvers" at Juventus became the crucial point of a scandal that led the former board to step down last year, and Juventus reached a settlement agreement at the end of May with the Italian sport justice bodies in which the Italian club agreed to pay a fine of €718,000 for the salary maneuvers case. In exchange they didn't appeal against a 10-point deduction for a separate capital gain case. UEFA also banned Juventus from competing in the European competitions during the 2023-24 season, which means the Bianconeri won't play in the UEFA Conference League this year even though they qualified despite the 10-point deduction. 

This incoming suit is the latest in a long line of all field challenges for Juventus, coming as it does in the same week that Paul Pogba was provisionally suspended for a failed doping test which showed elevated levels of testosterone in his system.