Cristiano Ronaldo Fires Back at Antonio Cassano For ‘Disrespecting Him’ After Exclusion From All-Time Football Greats List: Report – News18

We all know Cristiano Ronaldo to be competitive and someone who prides himself on being one of the best, if not the best, of all time in football. But, what happens when he isn’t considered the same by those who shared the field with him at one point?

Well, according to former Inter Milan and Italy international Antonio Cassano, Ronaldo ends up feeling ‘disrespected’ and claps back hard.

In a recent interview with the BSMT Podcast, Cassano revealed his personal top five players to ever play the game of football.

And in a shock verdict, he snubbed the five-time Ballon d’Or winner from his list – behind the likes of Lionel Messi, Pele, Diego Maradona, Johan Cruyff and the ‘original’ Brazilian Ronaldo.

The Portuguese allegedly wasn’t happy about being left out of the list, as Cassano revealed that he received both a text and a voice message from Ronaldo himself, lambasting him for his exclusion.

“I said Ronaldo is No. 1, the Brazilian. Cristiano Ronaldo doesn’t make my top five, or even top ten, because for me the quality of a player is another thing,” stated Cassano.

“Next thing, I finish the work I was doing and I get a text message from a +34 number, that’s Spain. It’s a list of all the trophies, goals and statistics.”

“Then he sends me a voice note, telling me, ‘You disrespected me, don’t do anything like that again. You only scored 150 goals, you only won four trophies.’ Perfect.”

“So I answer him. I say, ‘Dear Cristiano, listen to me. You think I disrespected you, I just don’t like you as a player. What’s the problem?’”

“He went to the trouble of messaging me, imagine.”

Cassano, who played for Real Madrid between 2006 and 2007, even went as far as to state that the current Al-Nassr star “doesn’t know how to play football and I couldn’t care less if he scores 3,000 goals”.

Elma Aveiro, Cristiano Ronaldo’s sister, was the first to publicly respond to Cassano’s criticisms of her brother: “I don’t know this poor man (Cassano) and I don’t even care. But I’ll just say one thing, if Cristiano doesn’t know how to play and scored 900 goals, imagine if he actually knew how to play”.

“They say he was a football player, I think they got it wrong; he was actually a ball boy,” concluded Elma regarding Cassano.