CRISTIANO RONALDO is planning to rival his old United team-mates by opening a new luxury hotel in Manchester.
The Old Trafford favourite, 35, has teamed up with Portuguese hotelier Pestana to launch the proposed ‘high-end lifestyle hotel’.
It is due to open in 2023, subject to planning permission.
And it will be the seventh of the chain’s ‘CR7’ branded hotels – named after the Portuguese captain’s initials and shirt number.
The hotel group announced: “It couldn’t be more appropriate – after all, this is the city where Cristiano Ronaldo started his international career in Man United back in 2003 and where he first used number 7.”
Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs – who both played with Ronaldo – own two hotels together in Manchester.
They first launched their successful ‘Hotel Football’ in the shadow of Old Trafford in 2015.
They also bought The Grade II-listed Stock Exchange eight years ago for £1.5million but invested around £20m on renovating it for it’s 2019 opening.
But both were closed this summer and offered out to NHS staff amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Ronaldo on the other hand already has hotel sites in his hometown of Funchal in Madeira and in Lisbon.
More openings are expected to be on the way in New York, Madrid, Marrakech and Paris.
But his new hotel in the Spanish capital has been put on hold due to the global crisis.
The planned grand opening of the Pestana CR7 Gran Via was scheduled for June.
But financial newspaper Invertia report on that being delayed due to the lockdown across the country drawing a halt to construction work.
