Paul Scholes has revealed what he asked Portugal boss Roberto Martinez 'off camera' about Cristiano Ronaldo as the Manchester United legend picks his...
Paul Scholes has revealed what he asked Portugal boss Roberto Martinez about Cristiano Ronaldo “off-camera” as the Manchester United legend picks his side in the CR7 debate.
Ronaldo played the full 90 minutes of Portugal’s 1-1 draw with DR Congo on Wednesday; many believe to the great detriment of his team owing to his lack of mobility at the age of 41.
And Scholes – who shared a dressing room with Ronaldo for six years at Old Trafford – believes the Portugal hero is now a “problem” for his country.
“I think it’s difficult for the manager,” Scholes said on The Good, The Bad & The Football podcast.
“I did a Stick to Football with Roberto Martinez and I asked him off-camera, I said, ‘Is he a problem for you?’, because I feel he is a little bit of a problem.
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“At 41 years of age… I think there’s only one position on the pitch at 41 years of age where you should be starting a game and that’s goalkeeper, for me.
“Now look, he is going to score goals and he’s in a team that have a lot of possession, but once there’s a game where it has to be transition… and there will be games like that. His movement at 41 years of age…
“The trouble with Portugal is they haven’t really got an outstanding centre-forward anyway, have they? You’ve got to have somebody who runs.
“For me, he has to be a player for the last 15 minutes. For a 40 or 41-year-old to be playing centre-forward, I just don’t get it.
“You might get away with it at centre-half, you might do in a team that keeps the ball and you probably get away with it as a goalkeeper, but as a centre-forward at 41… it’s not right.
“We saw it with Croatia and Luka Modric last night at 40 years old. Central midfield at 40…
“Cristiano will be so pissed off because Lionel Messi got a hat-trick, Kylian Mbappe got two… it will be killing him.
“I feel sorry for Martinez because he’s trying to embrace it and he’s saying, ‘No, I’ve got the best goalscorer in the world’, but deep down he must know that’s hurting his team.”
‘That much of an ego…’
Nicky Butt, who also played with Ronaldo at United, agreed with Scholes that Martinez has a “massive problem” on his hands.
“I think he’s got that much of an ego, Cristiano. He’s a great lad but he’s got such an ego and he’ll be a massive problem for that squad,” he chimed in.
“He was when he came back to Manchester United for a second time, it was a problem.
“If you look at the fans [for Portugal’s draw with DR Congo] last night, they had around 20,000 Portuguese fans and I reckon 18,000 had ‘Ronaldo 7’ on their back so you’ve also got that to deal with as a manager as well.”
