Cristiano Ronaldo has taken the world of YouTube by storm after launching his new official channel on the platform. He has already over 50 million subscribers in under a week of releasing the channel, where the Portuguese legend intends to give a deep-dive into how he behaves outside the football pitch.
Ronaldo has released videos interacting with his partner Georgina Rodriguez and giving an inside look at how they behave together.
But it seems that a big part of him releasing a channel was so that he could interview or interact with other prominent footballing names. In his first ‘big’ footballing interview, Ronaldo managed to convince his ex-Manchester United teammate Rio Ferdinand for his ‘UR Inside’ show.
The two talked about various topics about football, with Cristiano hinting that he wants to play until he’s 41. He also spoke about his desire to reach 1,000 goals scored in his career and script his name as the greatest goalscorer of all time. But in talking about his big ambitions, Ronaldo couldn’t help but resist the urge to take a dig at the late, great Brazilian footballer Pele.
Pele has the reputation of having scored over 1,000 goals in his career. Ronaldo appears to have some issue with that because he’s what he said about his ambitions of reaching 1,000 goals:
For me it’s the best mark that I can have in football, to reach, first 900 goals. After, my challenge is 1,000 goals. With one difference, all the goals that I score, they have video. So I can prove that it’s [real].
Ferdinand immediately caught whiff of what he was insinuating and called him out for trying to hint at Pele not csoring that many goals, to which Ronaldo responded:
Listen, I respect all of them. And if you want more goals, I can bring [footage] from training too. So no problem, all the goals on video! And I will prove to the people after [that I scored them]. [If] they prefer this player, I don’t care about that.
Ronaldo is taking a dig at some claims that Pele might’ve forged his record of having scored 1,283 goals and that there is no real evidence showing him having scored every single one of those goals. Some modern-day fans believe that Pele added goals scored in training matches or in friendly games to his overall tally to take it up to over 1,000.
Of course the Brazilian icon’s goals scored in the various FIFA World Cup editions he played in is still in footage, but as because he played the majority of his club career in Brazil – where football broadcasting was still not a big thing in his time – a lot of his domestic goals have no real video proof.
Brazilian football fans have been incensed by Ronaldo’s comments, which they consider to be extremely disrespectful to the deceased legend.
They are arguing that Pele’s achievements should not be undermined because he played 18 years of his career for Santos FC. That is because South American football was extremely competitive at that time and most of the Brazilian legends used to continue playing in their country than move away, like the footballers are doing these days.
Some fans have even argued that Pele scored 205 goals in under 200 matches against European clubs in his career.
Of course, Ronaldo fans are definitely on his side in labeling Pele’s goal-scoring record to be fabricated and an old image of Pele’s social media profile being altered to ‘increase’ his goal tally is also now making the rounds.
Ronaldo is attracting a lot of criticism for seemingly disrespecting a deceased legend in an effort to get some more views on his YouTube and try to overvalue his achievements.
Even though the Portugal legend remains one of the best goal-scorers of all time, this sly dig at Pele was unnecessary and one that only validates claims of those supporters who claim him to be egotistical.
