Cristiano Ronaldo has taken aim at former Manchester United teammate Wayne Rooney once again, implying the ex-England star was after a "new job" when he chose to criticise him.
Rooney admitted he didn't agree with Ronaldo's conduct when he stormed down the Old Trafford tunnel before the full-time whistle during United's 2-0 home win over Tottenham last month. It later emerged that the Portugal skipper had refused to come off the bench despite manager Erik ten Hag's wishes and he was subsequently briefly banned from the first-team fold.
"For Cristiano, just get your head down and work and be ready to play when the manager needs you. If he does that, he will be an asset. If he doesn't, it will become an unwanted distraction," Rooney told talkSPORT.
Ronaldo has clearly not taken Rooney's relatively tame criticism of the situation well and made a number of scathing remarks about United's record-goal scorer in response during his explosive interview with Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Asked about his former teammate's comments, Ronaldo suggested the pair's relationship had suffered irreparable damage. He said: "I don't understand, you should ask this question to him [Rooney]. I don't know why he criticised me so bad.
"Probably, because he finished his career in his 30s. I'm still playing at a high level, I'm not going to say that I'm looking better than him, which is true."
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Ronaldo continued his attack on Rooney with a fresh swipe by recalling the fact that the current DC United boss was round his house only recently, before then going on to publicly bash him in the media - implying the former Three Lions star is a hypocrite.
"I really don't understand people like that. Or if they want to be in a cover of the paper of the news, or they want new jobs or whatever," Ronaldo added.
"It's easy to criticise but if you don't know the whole story, it's easy. They are not my friends."
"It's easy to criticise, I don't know if they have a job in television that they must criticise to be more famous. I really don't understand it.
"I think they take advantage of [my name] because they are not stupid. I have to carry on my life with criticism. It's hard when you see people who were in the dressing room with you criticise in that way. I'm not going to sleep badly because of the criticism but it's not good to listen to that."
Ronaldo signed off by insisting Rooney is no longer a friend and the pair will "not be having dinner together" anytime soon.
