Ex Brazilian Soccer Star Ronaldo Joins Team PokerStars!

PokerStars have added another sporting superstar to its Team PokerStars SportStar with the inclusion of the Brazilian football player Ronaldo Nazario, not to be confused with the Real Madrid player Ronaldo! He joins a very elite group of sports greats that include Rafa Nadal, Boris Becker and Fatima Moreira De Melo. De Melo is a Dutch hockey player and I believe that we may have heard of the other two tennis greats with both Nadal and Becker being world superstars. However there's now a little competition in who is the greatest sports star on the PokerStars books as Ronaldo comes with a fine footballing background. Widely considered as one of the best players the world has ever seen, he played 98 times for Brazil and tops the all time leading goal scorer leader board in the history of the World Cup with a astonishing 15 goals. He also has a World Cup winners medal, along with plenty of European league and cup titles.

Ronaldo retired from the beautiful game in 2011 and spent his well earned cash wisely by starting his own company 9ine, which is now one of the biggest sports and entertainment agencies in Brazil. He made a move into poker last year when he signed up Team PokerStars Pro Brazil member Andre Akkari who became the first poker player to be signed by Ronaldo's agency. Off the virtual felt, Ronaldo has already given the poker industry a little boost as before the signing of Akkari the Brazilian Series of Poker was getting a field of around 400 players, but the Ronaldo & Akkiri team upped that number to a nice 1,500 players. This led to the series becoming sponsored by Stars and it's believed that Ronaldo will be kicking things off himself at that event in July this year.