Antonio Cassano revealed he received a strongly-worded message from Cristiano Ronaldo after making his feelings on the Al Nassr forward clear.
The former Italy international has long been a vocal critic of Ronaldo’s style of play, and claimed during the European Championships that the five-time Ballon d’Or winner ‘doesn’t know how to play football’.
Cassano also called for Ronaldo to hang up his boots in 2022 after he began to fall down the pecking order at Manchester United once his return to the club began to turn sour.
Most recently, he boldly stated that he would not be able to find a place for Ronaldo in his top ten best footballers of all time.
In a recent podcast appearance, Cassano claimed that Ronaldo took umbrage with his comments and decided to address the matter directly.
Former Italy forward Antonio Cassano revealed Cristiano Ronaldo confronted him after he left the Portuguese star out of his top ten footballers of all time
Ronaldo is said to have sent Cassano a list of his career accomplishments and accused him of ‘disrespect’
‘I said Ronaldo is No1, 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,’ Cassano told Passa Dal BSMT.
‘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.’
The former AC Milan and Real Madrid star revealed that he responded to Ronaldo’s criticism by insisting that the omission wasn’t personal.
‘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.’
After beginning his career at boyhood club Bari, Casano became the most expensive teenager in football history when he joined Roma in 2001.
Cassano ranked his former Real Madrid team-mate Ronaldo as the greatest player of all time
In 2006 he joined Los Blancos, becoming just the second Italian ever to do but struggled to replicate his form in LaLiga and was frequently accused of disciplinary infractions during his time in the Spanish capital.
He would depart Madrid a year later after just 19 league appearances to join Sampdoria before turning out for both Milan clubs, and parma before calling time on his career in 2017.
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