Ronaldo's "truth": "The national team manager had broken his word to me"

Six days after leaving the camp, Cristiano Ronaldo keeps his promise and gives his version in a long text posted on social media. He goes back to his first meeting with the new national team manager, at the Cidade do Futebol, and on to the Oslo game: he was asked whether he was ready to play around 30 minutes, said yes, warmed up and never came on. He describes a video call with Simão Coutinho, Al Nassr’s sporting director, which produced the notes for the manager’s press conference — and a commitment that, in his version, was not honoured. He apologises to the fans and to his teammates, admits he should not have left and asks the FPF to punish him with no mitigation, because he is the captain. It is not a farewell: after the suspension, “I will be available, as I always have been until today, to compete and win for our national team”. And he signs off: “This is, believe me, the purest of truths.”