Antonio Cassano is now 39-years-of-age and has moved on from his playing career to new ground as a pundit.
It would appear that role largely involves the Italian taking snipes at current players and managers, clearly enjoying the reactions he gets from sharing his, sometimes clearly forced, opinions.
Cassano has been perfecting his talking head role for over a year, and when Cristiano Ronaldo was at Juventus he was inevitably, because every star is, on the end of some criticism.
That didn’t go down well with the Manchester United player and, at least according to Cassano, he sent a WhatsApp message asking for more respect.
In his typical style, Cassano has now made that public and used it to bring more attention to himself.
SportMediaSet quote him as saying: “Cristiano Ronaldo wrote me messages asking me to have more respect for him, for what he had won, for the goals that he had scored. I’m not afraid of the truth, I face the whole world. It made me angry.
“I heard from Buffon: he confirmed that he gave my number to the press officer who then gave it to Ronaldo who contacted me to tell me that he scored 750 goals and I only scored 150. Dear Ronaldo: you have everything, live calm and relaxed. Instead of sending messages to me, take an example from Messi who doesn’t give a damn about everything and everyone. Buffon laughed, even Chiellini knew.”
In October of this year, Cassano said about Ronaldo: “Enough of these dramas: Cristiano Ronaldo is the best player in the history of football? He is not even in the best five. As for me, Messi, Pele, Maradona, Cruyff and Ronaldo the phenomenon are on another level.”
In the past few months, Cassano has taken shots at Romelu Lukaku, Antonio Conte, Fabio Paratici and Jorginho among others.
