Euro 2016: Why we shouldn't hate Cristiano Ronaldo's 'sore loser' attitude

People, including experienced journalists, often forget that what players and managers tell the press has little to do with the truth. The media is a place to play mind-games, to deflect attention from one’s team frailties and set up the team. This is just what Cristiano Ronaldo did with his ‘small team mentality’ comments against Iceland, comments that has every one’s panties in a politically correct bunch.

After the match against Iceland, whose national population is less than 1% of the number of Ronaldo’s Twitter followers, the forward appeared to be throwing his customary sulky fit after the minnows shocked his Portuguese team by holding them to a 1-1 draw.

Ronaldo said after the match: “I thought they’d won the Euros the way they celebrated at the end, it was unbelievable. Then they don’t try to play and just defend, defend, defend, this is in my opinion shows a small mentality and they are not going to do anything in the competition.”

The neutral observer will know that Ronaldo’s comments are far off the mark. Iceland didn’t just hold back and defend or park the bus but they attacked with abandon and their performance deserves our applause.

But those pouring scorn over Ronaldo’s perceived pettiness would do well to remember that this ‘sore loser’ attitude is what makes him inarguably one of the greatest player in the world. And the comments, serve another purpose, as a façade to draw attention from his own team’s failings, by seeking to deflect the criticism to himself rather than his teammates.

Ronaldo is from the Manchester United school of sore losers, from a time when United were the best team in Europe and England and didn’t take kindly to anyone beating them. Not only did that make Manchester United the most successful team in England in the late 90s and early 2000s, but also the most hated one. 

The United dressing room of yore had always been high on determination to win, but the flipside has been that all these winners were extremely sore losers. The likes of Eric Cantona, Mark Hughes, Steve Bruce, Peter Schmeichel, Roy Keane and Paul Scholes would’ve kicked their grandmother if it would help them win and that’s what made the club the greatest team in England and Europe.

Ronaldo simply belongs to that world rather than the politically correct, sterilised and superficially-nice mirage of modern football where one is supposed to grin and shake hands and congratulate the opposition team for doing a good job.

And for the uninitiated, it wasn’t just the players who shared this Ronaldoesque trait of being bad losers. Manchester United’s most successful manager was one of them too, who believed in the Vito Corleone maxim of never showing what’s under one’s fingernails to the outside world. While time and again Ferguson did try to rein his players in, he knew that he couldn’t make them choir boys and expect to keep winning games.

There’s also a hint of the so-called mind-games in Ronaldo’s comments, and we’d do well to remember he learnt his trade at Sir Alex’s knees, who knew exactly how to wind the opposition or even referees up with his pre-match comments.

During his nearly three-decade career, he has blamed the pitch, bad referring, the sun (the heavenly bodies are not exempt from criticism), jetlag and the kit (the dull grey United kit which everyone hated) for his team’s losses rather than his team’s inadequacies.

Ferguson and Ronaldo (Getty Images) 

Ferguson was such a bad loser that in the later part of his career he often sent out his assistants for pressers instead of showing his fangs, such was his agony whenever the team lost. In fact, when Ronaldo was sent off in a match in 2008 for hand ball (which resulted in a second yellow), Ferguson actually had the gall to claim that his star forward was just acting in self-defence and protecting his pretty face (okay he didn’t use the word pretty).

And he would never forget an insult.

Sir Alex banned the BBC and refused to talk to them for seven years after they ran a documentary called Father and Son, which portrayed his son Jason as someone who exploited his father’s image and positions.

Perhaps dignity in losing and a winning mentality mutually exclusive characteristics. Current Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho, who has been entrusted with filling Ferguson's impossibly big boots and return Manchester United to the top of the pile also has the same attitude. 

Jose Mourinho (Getty Images) 

Hell-hath no fury like a Mourinho scorned and over the years, Jose has also blamed the opposition team’s physicality, bad refereeing decisions, twisted officials, the opposition team’s theatrics, lack of money and a host of imaginary reasons for defeat. In fact, Mourinho's behaviour at times has even been worse than Ferguson like the time he poked erstwhile Barcelona manager Tito Vilanova in the eye. 

This doesn’t mean that Fergsuon or Mourinho were self-delusional or that they didn’t know or understand their team failings. Like Ronaldo, they know very well what’s wrong, but simply refuse to pinpoint blame and deflect attention from their failings. This is what makes them great managers, and it’s the same characteristic that makes Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the greatest players in the world.

And in the world of politically sanitised players worried about sponsorships and looking good and acting nice, we could do with more players like Cristiano Ronaldo. Perhaps this makes Ronaldo appear like an even bigger tool, but it’s unlikely he cares much about it. He has, in other words, more important things to do than ponder over what hacks and mortal men think of his behaviour.