Cristiano Ronaldo sent texts to Rio Ferdinand when Gary Lineker said Lionel Messi is better

Cristiano Ronaldo’s future is currently up in the air after it emerged that he wishes to leave Manchester United ahead of the 2022-23 season.

The legendary Portuguese superstar dropped a bombshell on United over the weekend, informing the club of his desire to leave Old Trafford in order to play Champions League football.

Ronaldo turns 38 in February and is acutely aware that his time as a professional footballer is running out. He wants to be competing for the biggest honours and doesn’t feel he’ll have that opportunity at Man Utd during the upcoming season.

There’s no doubt that Ronaldo would love to win the Ballon d’Or at least one more time before he hangs up his boots.

That Ronaldo’s long-term rival Lionel Messi sits two Ballons d’Or clear of him on seven wins must irk him.

Over the course of his illustrious career, the veteran forward has made no secret of his desire to be widely regarded as the greatest footballer of all time.

That insatiable inner desire to be the best is the reason he’s been able to scale such unbelievably lofty heights over the past two decades. His mentality is on a different level to most.

So much has been said about Ronaldo over the years that you’d presume he’d be immune to criticism by now.

But his former Man Utd teammate Rio Ferdinand revealed during Euro 2020 that Ronaldo has previously text him after Gary Lineker expressed his belief that Messi is the better footballer.

“He was an obsessed human in terms of becoming the best,” Ferdinand said on the BBC in 2021, per The Mirror. “After 30, we all sit in here, went down. He has gone on. Accelerated. Defies logic really.

“It’s down to commitment, a little bit of luck genetically as well. But he’s just a phenomenal football player, somebody