Italian club Sampdoria finally confirmed the signing of Leeds midfielder Ronaldo Vieira and their social media team jokingly made it look like they’d signed Ronaldo.
The text on the player announcement read: “BREAKING: #Sampdoria sign #Ronaldo.”
Accompanying this was an image of a silhouette of a player with “RONALDO” in huge letters and “VIEIRA” in small type underneath.
BREAKING: #Sampdoria sign #Ronaldo! pic.twitter.com/vTZafVkMBF
— Sampdoria English (@sampdoria_en) August 3, 2018
Leeds had themselves announced that Vieira was leaving on a permanent five–year deal on Thursday for a fee reported to be around £7million rising to a potential £10million.
Leeds fans were sad to see him go but football fans from all different clubs appreciated the humour shown by the Sampdoria social media team.
One fan said Sampdoria had more ambition than Chelsea, signing Ronaldo AND Vieira at the same time.
A Leeds fan said they’d only signed Vieira so they could do this tweet in response to Juventus signing Cristiano Ronaldo.
Here are the best reactions to the amusing announcement:
It had to be done I can understand this tweet???
— OTM (@2w1c3) August 3, 2018
https://twitter.com/TeamGunners_/status/1025297710998581248
https://twitter.com/superiormilan/status/1025298694608957440
???
— Sachin Naidoo (@NaidooSachin) August 3, 2018
https://twitter.com/RafaCrosta/status/1025302027444867073
— Onur of Rivia H?O (@OnurOfRivia) August 3, 2018
@Callum_Wood1997 100% certain they signed Ronaldo from us just so they could do this in response to juventus ??
— Greg Selby (@gregselby97) August 3, 2018
Amazing ??
— David (@Davesaninja) August 3, 2018
SPETTACOLARE! pic.twitter.com/HLpmDO55EM
— Joe ? (@milanelloman) August 3, 2018
There’s always one though and a fan decided it was his job to explain the joke to everyone else just in case they hadn’t got it.
They mean Ronaldo Vieira not Cristiano Ronaldo!
— kamaran yariga (@Deep_lying_Play) August 3, 2018
OPINION
Fair play. There’s often not enough humour in football and Sampdoria deserve a round of applause for doing this after Juventus signed the other Ronaldo. Ronaldo Vieira has the best footballing name ever and he could easily go on to live up to his predecessors with this deal being a step up for him. Leeds’ loss is Sampdoria’s gain though and if he shows the same loyalty that he has done to fans at Elland Road, he’ll quickly become a fan favourite in Italy.