Cristiano Ronaldo Reportedly Has a Very NSFW Nickname for Lionel Messi

Argentina and Portugal play next week in a high-profile international soccer friendly at Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United in England. The game will pit the world’s two best players — Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — against one another with, well, not much on the line unless you work in the ticket sales department.

In something that surely cannot be a coincidence, Tuesday The Telegraph in England published an excerpt from author Guillem Balague. The excerpt begins detailing how the two soccer superstars are cordial to each other in public, but later reveals Ronaldo’s nickname for Messi in the Real Madrid locker room.

"And that is why, according to some Real Madrid players, CR7 has a nickname for him: ‘motherf—-r’; and if he sees someone from the club speaking to Leo, he also ends up being baptised ‘motherf—-r’."

Oh but wait, there’s more.

"In that environment, Ronaldo usually compares their relationship with that between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. And the Madrid players, with their less than subtle dressing-room sense of humour, have a long list of jokes that include Messi as Ronaldo’s dog or puppet, or kept in a designer handbag belonging to the Portuguese player. And much worse."

Again the timing of this can’t be overstated. Plus it’s always easy to rile up the Ronaldo/Messi and Real Madrid/Barcelona partisans to draw eyeballs to your media outle.

If you’re a neutral, do you really care what Ronaldo thinks of Messi behind closed doors or vice versa? The rivalry between the two on the field is provides enough for everyone to enjoy.