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Cristiano Ronaldo refused to be drawn into a conversation about long-time rival Lionel Messi, talkSPORT reports.
The Portugal forward shrugged off days of widespread criticism by scoring twice in his nation’s 5-0 group win over Uzbekistan to open his goal account in North America.
While talk about the Golden Boot race dominated football fan chats, Ronaldo’s name was not among the discussion as Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland battle for the top scorer award.
However, in finding the back of the net, 41-year-old Ronaldo became the first ever player to score at six World Cups to make his own headlines 24 hours after, Messi made history of his own when he became the World Cup’s all-time leading goalscorer.
And Ronaldo, who is the greatest goal scorer of all time, was not in the mood to entertain any question about Messi vs himself, so when one reporter began his question by mentioning his name, he turned his back and fielded another question.
Messi has scored five goals in his first two games, Mbappe and Haaland have scored four times, while Harry Kane and Vincius Junior have two apiece.
But now Ronaldo is off the mark and he gave his detractors a timely reminder of what he can still produce on the big stage.
“We’re getting better. That’s how life is. There are ups and downs in life and in matches and the aim is always to get better.
Also Read: World Cup 2026: Ronaldo Is A Role Model To Portugal –Martinez
“It’s been a hard week, a very difficult week. Public opinion has been very hard on us, on all the players and especially on me and on the manager.
“But it doesn’t matter because as you can guess I’ve been in the profession for 23 years and it’s always when things are going well, ‘Cristiano is good’, and when things are going badly, it’s ‘he’s retired, he’s old.’ It’s always like this. But me and my teammates responded well and it’s what we wanted.
“We’re in a good position, we played well, we played attacking football and it’s difficult to stop Portugal when we’re like this, and it came together for us to score five goals.
“Honestly I’m very happy and now it’s time to recover and get ready for the next one.”
