Cristiano Ronaldo has been slammed by former Italy star Antonio Cassano, who believes the Al Nassr and Portugal superstar doesn’t know how to play football, other than scoring goals.
Ronaldo recently made history by hitting the 900th goal of his career, and there’s no doubt he’s going to go down as one of the best ever to play the game after a remarkable career at clubs like Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus.
Still, it seems the 39-year-old isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, with Cassano naming six big-name forwards of recent times that he rates more highly.
As quoted by the Sun, the outspoken pundit slammed Ronaldo and described Robert Lewandowski, Karim Benzema, Luis Suarez, Sergio Aguero, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Gonzalo Higuain as six players who are or were better all-rounders than Ronaldo.
Ronaldo criticism seems over the top
While it may be true that, say, in the conversations about Ronaldo vs Lionel Messi, it’s worth noting that it’s the latter who can be more of a joy to watch due to the quality of his dribbling and passing, it’s not like Ronaldo isn’t actually pretty good at those things himself.
The Portugal international is an absolutely lethal goal-scorer, and as he’s got older he’s perhaps spent more time in the penalty area than he did during his peak years, when he got more involved in the build-up.
But for Cassano to say Ronaldo can’t actually do those things at all seems really over the top, and disrespectful to such a great player who’s achieved so much in his career.
Cassano is of course entitled to his opinions, and the other players he mentioned such as Suarez and Benzema are also great players, but it seems a shame to have to resort to such petty insults at Ronaldo to make that point.