With Ronaldo winning the Ballon d'Or for the first time, Manchester City's marketing naturally pushed everything to the maximum for his promotion: innovative promotional posters, fresh club banners, all of his images on Manchester City's new official website, and, in the next match, the mascots Moonchester and Moonbeam joining the sidelines during home games.
"Also, don't forget about Nakata promotion. Just shift the budget for the two of them until next year," Richard reminded Karren Brady, City's marketing head.
People thought the best-selling merchandise would probably be Ronaldo or Zidane, but they were wrong.
Hidetoshi Nakata.
Given that City had just paid Perugia a relatively small fee of $490,000 (£46,000) for the young Japanese national captain, it was amusing to recall how eyebrows were raised all over Europe when City gambled to import the midfielder from the J-League in the summer of the previous year.
