Former Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand said that he and Quinton Fortune used to 'borderline bully' Cristiano Ronaldo during games of table tennis to build his resilience.
Ronaldo had two spells at United with his first coming while he was a young player on the rise. At that time, Ferdinand and Fortune were senior professionals in Sir Alex Ferguson's squad and were seen as role models for the soon-to-be Portuguese great.
In an interview with Australian radio show Kyle and Jackie O, Ferdinand admitted that his and Fortune's treatment of Ronaldo while playing table tennis would result in the star getting upset. He explained: "Me and a guy called Quinton Fortune - another teammate - we used to take the mick out of him a lot.
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"He was a lot younger than us at the time - borderline bullying, maybe, but it was just trying to build him, build that resilience. We used to play every other day before training, as part of the warm-up.
"I used to smash him all over the place. He did beat me… it was me and him, [ranked] one and two, like [Roger] Federer and [Rafa] Nadal. If it was televised, it would have broken records. He used to, like, almost cry and that, he was so competitive."
No ill-will was ever held between Ronaldo and Ferdinand. Back in November during his infamous Piers Morgan interview, the current Al Nassr captain declared that the ex-England centre back was a 'very good guy'.
Meanwhile, Ferdinand was often quick to praise Ronaldo, especially during his second stint at Old Trafford. After he scored his 700th club goal against Everton, Ferdinand said: "700 club goals, that is more than I have appearances probably almost as many as all of us in the studio [Joe Cole and Joleon Lescott] put together, almost. Phenomenal."
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