Football Daily | Ronaldo hits new heights for hubris after busy week playing fame game

<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/info/2022/nov/14/football-daily-email-sign-up"><strong>Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!</strong></a></p><p>Football Daily, for research/self-loathing purposes, recently sat through Cristiano Ronaldo’s latest chat with Piers Morgan. Among many moments of hubris, self-celebration and smoke being blown up the great man’s rear end by the ever-willing Morgan, Ronaldo took a typical moment of quiet self-reflection. “I think in the world, nobody is more famous than me,” he trumpeted, Piers nodding along obediently. “Let’s debate it – who’s more famous, me or Donald Trump?” Though such a pointless debate might provide welcome distraction for a president rather uncomfortably named in some emails making the news at the moment, it has very little to do with what Ronaldo is famous for. While doing his day job he had a very bad time in Dublin, as Portugal <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/nov/13/world-cup-2026-qualifying-roundup-norway-estonia-republic-of-ireland-portugal-moldova-italy">went down 2-0</a> to an inspired Republic of Ireland side.</p><p>Loosely on the theme of the Wythenshawe FC story doing the rounds (Football Daily letters passim), I have a mildly amusing tale from the late 90s. I played in a bang-average, typically hungover, Sunday League pub team in Exeter. Several of my teammates and I were friends and occasional drinking buddies with a couple of the younger Exeter City players, who popped in the boozer in their downtime. After a particularly enjoyable Saturday night in the pub, following a rare Grecian home win, one of the players had joined us to celebrate, and, inevitably, we cajoled him into playing for us the following morning. No one expected the player to show, but there he was, boots and all, outside the pub at 9.30am. We didn’t think he’d actually play! We were away to a village team, miles a