Piers Morgan

Ronaldo is happy to be sacked

[Getty Images]

‘You’d need to live on the moon not to know about Cristiano Ronaldo’s interview with Piers Morgan,’ said England footballer Jesse Lingard. I doubt even that would provide adequate protection. I’ve never experienced such global attention for anything in my career, and it reflects Ronaldo’s status as world sport’s biggest star. In fact, given he has 25 per cent more Instagram followers than anyone else – he passed 500 million this week, 123 million more than his nearest rival, Lionel Messi – I’d argue he’s the world’s biggest star of any kind. The interview’s been watched 15 million times on YouTube alone, which already makes it the most-viewed sports interview ever. It might even end up eclipsing the most-watched interview with anyone – Michael Jackson’s 1993 TV confessional with Oprah Winfrey, which got 63 million viewers. When I relayed this to Cristiano, whose ego makes me seem a bastion of humility, he chuckled. ‘Of course, is normal.’

Jackson could have been Ronaldo’s boss. In 1999, I talked to the singer after he’d attended a Fulham match with the club’s then owner, Mohamed Al-Fayed. ‘You should buy Manchester United,’ I suggested. ‘I’d love to get involved with one of the big teams,’ he replied. ‘How much are they?’ ‘£600 million.’ ‘That’s very interesting. I’ll have a think about that. I’m astounded by how much I enjoy soccer.’ If Jacko had bought United instead of it going to the fan-despised Glazers, it would have been a Thriller. I’m just not sure Cristiano could have coped with his club’s owner getting more Instagram followers than him.

The scoop’s a game-changer for my new show Piers Morgan Uncensored and bizarrely, I have an Iranian-American murderess named Sheila Davalloo to thank for it. It was after Ronaldo watched me grilling the vile killer – she stabbed her love rival to death, then tried to do the same to her husband while playing a blindfolded sex game – that he messaged me out of the blue in 2018: ‘Hello sir, how are you? I saw your documentary on Netflix, Killer Women.

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