"Rooney is probably jealous, neither he nor Gary Neville are my friends"

It has become customary in the British press for a number of former Premier League footballers to offer points of view on the current state of English football. Wayne Rooney, although he is a coach, and Gary Neville have been part of this dynamic, criticising Cristiano Ronaldo for his decline with Manchester United. Well, the Portuguese responded in his controversial interview with Piers Morgan.

"Listening to how former colleagues or teammates criticise you when they only see one point of view is easy. It's easy to criticise, I don't know if, when you have a job in television, you have to criticise to become more famous. I don't really understand it. I think they take advantage of that because they're not stupid," he commented in a conversation in which other phrases have already been very notorious, such as one in which he admits that he has no respect for Erik ten Hag.

"It's difficult when you see people who were in the dressing room with you criticising like that," he said. "What Rooney said? I really don't understand people like that. They'll want to be on the front page of the paper or in the news. They'll want new jobs or whatever. He's probably jealous because he finished his career at 30 and I'm still playing at a high level. I'm not going to say I look better than him, which I do," he added.

"They are not my friends, they are colleagues. We play together, we don't meet up and we never have dinner together," Ronaldo said. Asked about Roy Keane, he said he is "the best captain" he has ever had "in his life". On Rio Ferdinand, he said: "He helped me a lot. He was my neighbour, they're both great guys, but not just because they speak well of me".