Organizers of a high-profile summer tournament for world soccer’s biggest club teams have decided to keep Juventus and its star Cristiano Ronaldo away from the United States this year, eliminating the risk of the Portuguese star’s being detained by the authorities as part of a rape investigation in Las Vegas. While the bulk of the games in the tournament, the International Champions Cup, will take place in the United States as usual, Juventus’s games will be a part of the Asian version of the annual event. Juventus will be joined there — most likely in China and Singapore — by the Premier League teams Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United. Ronaldo, a five-time world player of the year, is in his first season in Italy’s top league after Juventus paid more than $114 million to acquire him from Real Madrid last July. Only months after his transfer, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said it had reopened an investigation into accusations by an American woman, Kathryn Mayorga, who said Ronaldo raped her in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2009 and later paid her $375,000 for her silence.

Source: New York Times March 20, 2019 17:48 UTC