(Photo by Patrick Bolger/Getty Images)
"When you are at the top, everyone will try to knock you down."
- Portuguese saying
Cristiano Ronaldo has managed to conquer everything, individually that is: Best UEFA CL player, the Golden Boot, FIFA and FIFPro World Player of the year, FIFPro Young Player of the Year, Best UEFA CL forward, multiple presences at All-Star XIs...
...and most recently two special records that translate his abilty into economical worth and popularity: Biggest transfer fee in football and biggest attendance for the presentation of a player (roughly 80.000 people).
One Champions League and some English domestic titles, join these individual awards, all won during his time at Manchester United.
When you've reached this level at 24, you are going to be hated.
The young gun from Sporting Lisbon was expected to follow the footsteps of Figo who also came from the same team and had recently won the FIFA WPOTY award.
He proved Sir Alex right and went on to lead United to English dominance after everyone expecting Chelsea to reign over the Prem.
Like every superstar, 50 percent of the fans hated him, another 50 percent loved him.
Still Ronaldo lost a lot of his popularity during the 2006 WC.
After a commited challenge between Rooney and Ricardo Carvalho, both players fell down and Rooney stepped on Carvalho's crotch whilst trying to get up.
A huge group of Portuguese players, led by Ronaldo, stormed the ref, who sent them away and showed Rooney the red card. Ronaldo was caught on camera winking, to whom? No one knows, but back in the Land of her Majesty everyone assumed that he was either winking to one of the refs or to the Portuguese bench.
As if Scolari would have given Ronaldo an order to demand a red card for Wayne Rooney.
Had the Gods of football decided to knock Portugal out, then everyone would have kept their mouths shut on this matter, but Portugal won on penalties and Ronaldo was the man to blame for the English squad getting knocked out.
English fans started to boo Ronaldo in a monstrous way. Every time he touched the ball all you could hear was "buuuuuu" and once in a while everybody was quiet.
Rooney threatened him, as did the fans did and still he stayed and won the Champions League.
The "showoff," " show-boater," "the arrogant", "the cheater," Ronaldo had completed one of his two dreams: winning the Champions League.
Ronaldo was now known as "The Best Player in the World," but for the English fans he was still "the cheater."
Well, maybe he was a "cheater", since he should not be allowed to play against such lacklustre opponents.
This would drift on to the Portuguese national team. Having eliminated England twice in a row, the English now saw a reason to attack Portugal - they cheat, they dive.
Of course, English players were always all fair play - just ask the German team of the World Cup 1966 to see how they feel about that.
Or just ask the chaps from Slovenia or Wayne Rooney (you know him, the one that is the best Player of the World if you exclude Ronaldo, Messi, Kaká, Ibrahimovic, Henry, Xavi, Fabregas, Terry, Lampard and some other 20 players), after all isn't he "honest and fair"?
Before calling Portuguese players a bunch of divers, remember what happened yesterday, will you?
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