In addition to buying Valladolid, he is also setting up a business called Family Office Concierge R9 that will handle players’ financial affairs, so they can continue to profit from their careers into retirement. “We are trying to do for them what I did for me: Make sure they have a long life with all the money they’ve got,” he said.

Ronaldo said he had been curious about business from the days he was a gaptoothed teenager making life difficult for defenders unable to match his skill, his instincts and his pace. Business managers and sports marketing executives surrounded Ronaldo from his earliest days in Brazil and then in Europe, from his first steps at PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands to his membership in Los Galacticos, the constellation of stars assembled at Real Madrid. He paid close attention to what they did, he said, especially executives at Nike, the American sporting goods colossus that continues to invest in his brand.

At Real Madrid, Ronaldo played alongside Beckham, Zinedine Zidane and Luís Figo in an era when the team’s president, Florentino Pérez, tried to build a squad that was both a championship team and a sports marketing machine.

Ronaldo’s Madrid teams failed to win the European game’s biggest prize, the Champions League, but they left an imprint of celebrity sizzle on the sport that endures.

“I think the world of marketing and money in football was changed because of that,” he said.

Since he stopped playing in 2011, Ronaldo has focused on self-improvement and building a diversified business empire. He was among the leaders of the committee that organized the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, working closely with several of the Brazilian soccer executives later charged with corruption by American investigators. (One of the men has been jailed in the United States, and two others still face charges; they deny the accusations against them, but Ronaldo offered his own verdict. “They did a horrible thing to football — they stole it from the people, ” Ronaldo said. “They stole the magic, the happiness.”)

Diving into business full time, he built a sports marketing company as part of a joint venture with the world’s largest advertising group, WPP. The business operated for four years, and then Ronaldo purchased the sports marketing company Octagon’s Brazil operation. Those endeavors led to a friendship with the WPP founder Martin Sorrell, who convinced him to try living in London. Ronaldo lived there for three years, learning English along the way.