I don’t pretend to have any inside knowledge of how things work at City but when I was in business I was doing deals for almost 40 years. It goes something like this.
seller : we want 25m
buyer : we can’t pay you anything
seller : then we we can’t make a deal
buyer : as a gesture of good faith we‘ll give you 10m
seller : we won’t take less than 20m
buyer : we won’t go any higher than 15m
seller : deal.
Everyone pretends to be unhappy but in reality everyone got exactly what they wanted.
I suspect Ronaldo’s agent will have to work the room pretty hard. The less City pay the more his client earns and vice versa.