Cristiano Ronaldo: No Feud With Mourinho, I’d Play For Him Again


Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese world football (aka soccer) superstar who is known for his temperamental demeanor as much as for his prodigious goal-scoring prowess, now says that he would play for ex-manager Jose Mourinho again, according to Real Madrid News.

Ronaldo brushed off reports that the pair reportedly split on acrimonious terms when Mourinho left the giant Spanish club Real Madrid for England’s Chelsea F.C. over the summer.

As fans of European football are well aware, Mourinho is as prominent a manager as Cristiano Ronaldo is a player. Mourinho, who is also Portuguese, burst on the world sports scene after managing the Portuguese club F.C. Porto to an improbable victory in the prestigious Europe-wide Champions League tournament in 2004.

After that accomplishment, he became one of the sport’s most sought-after managers, finally taking the post at West London club Chelsea, the organization to which he returned just this season. But on arriving at Chelsea for the first time, he took the opportunity to declare himself “a special one.”

The nickname “Special One” has stuck with Mourinho ever since.

Ronaldo, however, has a more quantifiable claim to being a “special one.” Since arriving at Real Madrid in 2009 from the powerhouse English team Manchester United, Ronaldo has averaged one goal for every game he has played, as per stats on ESPN FC.

In the 2013-14 season, he has already scored 40 goals in 32 games. In his most prolific year, 2011-12, he tallied a staggering 71 goals in 64 games played.

But at the end of Mourinho’s term in charge of real Madrid, reports surfaced that he and his world-beating goal-scorer had a falling out. At one point, England’s Mirror newspaper reported, Cristiano Ronaldo — known to his fans affectionately as CR7 — was caught on camera hurling a verbal insult at his coach and countryman Mourinho.

According to soccer news site Goal.com, the player and manager, who both have egos to match their talents, clashed as early as Mourinho’s first season in Madrid.

Now, Ronaldo says there was nothing to any of those stories.

“We never had a confrontation and I have never spoken ill about anyone,” Cristiano Ronaldo told a Spanish TV station as quoted by Real Madrid News. “I would work with Mourinho again and with other coaches I have had, like [Sir Alex] Ferguson, [Manuel] Pellegrini, and [Laszlo] Boloni. I learned a lot from them.”

His conciliatory statements were reported just a day after Cristiano Ronaldo’s agent, Jorge Mendes, took a swipe at Lionel Messi, generally considered the world’s best player and who plays for Real Madrid’s arch-rival, Barcelona.

As reported in The Mirror, Mendes said that if Cristiano Ronaldo played for Barcelona, he would score 120 goals per year.

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