Piers Morgan has claimed that Cristiano Ronaldo was well aware that his bombshell interview would bring around the end of his time at Manchester United.
Ronaldo and United agreed to terminate the 37-year-old's contract just days after he went public with his unhappiness at Old Trafford, taking aim at manager Erik ten Hag and the Glazer family as he told Morgan of his frustrations.
Now, Morgan has revealed how the interview came about and has claimed that Ronaldo knew it would end with him leaving United.
“To be brutally honest, I think that he knew,” Morgan told FS1 when asked if Ronaldo knew the consequences of the interview. “Look, he’s a very smart guy, Cristiano, he knows what he’s doing.
“He and I have built a relationship going back a few years now, and when he rang me he was like ‘I want to do an interview, I want to say everything.’ I said, ‘if you say everything I think you’re going to say, then you’re probably going to have to leave the club’. He went: ‘I know.’ So he knew what he was getting into.
“He didn’t think it was a certainty, he didn’t want to say in the interview I’m definitely leaving, I’m going to leave United. But this was a guy who at the end of his tenure felt he was being disrespected by the coach, Ten Hag, by the owners who he said he’d never even met (and) by the executives of the club who didn’t even believe him when he said his daughter was sick.
“So you put it all together you’ve got a disrespected guy who I think is the best to ever play the game. He said enough.”
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Ronaldo now finds himself looking for a new club, with the veteran striker expected to receive further lucrative offers from Saudi Arabia after snubbing a move to the Middle East during the summer.
90min understands, however, that Ronaldo would prefer to remain in Europe, where Newcastle have already declined to make him an offer and Chelsea manager Graham Potter is not particularly interested.
Source : 90min