Cristiano Ronaldo has hit out at Gary Neville during his now widely scrutinised and publicised interview with Piers Morgan.
The 37-year-old admitted to being betrayed by Manchester United and said he felt like he was being forced out as well as making comments on the structure of the club and its lack of progress. With the World Cup break and then the January transfer window, he may well have played for the Red Devils for the final time.
With a winter move possible, Chelsea are one of the clubs that would appeal to him with Champions League football and money to spend, but given Graham Potter's appointment and Todd Boehly's previous shutdown from Thomas Tuchel on the subject, it's far from a simple or logical deal.
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The latest excerpt from the interview sees the forward confused as to why he is so heavily the centre of attention, and he takes aim at teammate Neville, who has recently been under fire from Chelsea fans for comments against Todd Boehly.
In the interview, Ronaldo said, "To listen as ex-colleagues or team-mates criticise you, when they only see one point of view. It's easy. It's easy to criticise, I don't know if you have a job in television that they must criticise to be more famous. I really don't understand it.
"It's hard when you see people who was in the dressing room with you criticising that way." He also added: "It's hard to listen to that sort of criticism and negativity from people who play with you, for example, Gary Neville as well.
"People can have their own opinion but they don't know what is going inside the training ground at Carrington - or even my life. They shouldn't listen to one point of view - they should listen to my point of view as well, because it's easy to criticise [when] you don't know the whole story."
"They are not my friends, they are colleagues. We play together, they're not coming, we're not ever having dinner together."
This is likely to get a response from Neville, but Chelsea fans may well agree with Ronaldo's stance to some extent. Speaking after the 1-0 defeat to Newcastle the former fullback once again doubled down on his critcism of Boehly after Graham Potter's struggles leading into the World Cup break.
Neville said on his own podcast: "I got battered by Chelsea fans at the start of the season. I'm not surprised by what's happened at Chelsea. This has got the absolute hallmarks of a project that will take time.
"You look at what happened at the start of the season, there's no doubt that it was handled with crassness in the way in which the transfer window and market was being handled. That will take Chelsea a couple of years to recover from if they don't get it right."
He said: "I hope he's not under pressure, I hope they see it through because this is a culmination of Abramovich leaving, the new owner coming in and sticking his chest out and going around Europe thinking he can play Football Manager. I've seen it before at this club [Manchester United], it doesn't tend to work."
The Football Manager comment is the jarring one, and Boehly's work behind the scenes to restructure the club has been under the microscope, but his attempts to clear out and get the job going quickly are admirable, how they work out in the long run is still yet to be seen. But Neville's comments frustrated Chelsea fans just like they angered Ronaldo.
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