Cristiano Ronaldo text me listing every single trophy he’d won after I said he wasn’t in my top 10 players of all time

"Cristiano Ronaldo doesn’t make my top five, or even top ten, because for me the quality of a player is another thing.

"Next thing, I finish the work I was doing and I get a text message from a +34 number, that’s Spain. It’s a list of all the trophies, goals and statistics.

"Then he sends me a voice note, telling me, ‘You disrespected me, don’t do anything like that again. You only scored 150 goals, you only won four trophies.’ Perfect.

“So I answer him. I say, ‘Dear Cristiano, listen to me. You think I disrespected you, I just don’t like you as a player. What’s the problem?’

“He went to the trouble of messaging me, imagine.”

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Cassano - who claimed he could have been as good as Lionel Messi or Neymar - came through at Bari before playing for some of Europe's top clubs including Roma, Real Madrid, AC Milan and Inter Milan.

The forward also racked up 39 caps for Italy and two league titles - a LaLiga with Los Blancos and the 2010-11 Serie A during his time at AC Milan.

But despite his highly-controversial and mediocre career compared to the illustrious achievements of Ronaldo, that has not stopped him from launching multiple personal assaults on the Al-Nassr man.

Cassano also blasted CR7 as "selfish" and only thinking about "goals and records".

He then likened Ronaldo to Filippo Inzaghi and David Trezeguet for simply being a good goalscorer - not a "genius" footballer.

In September 2022, Cassano told the Portugal legend to "do yourself a favour" and "stop" his career by retiring.

And two years later, he piled in again by insisting Ronaldo "doesn't know how to play football".

He added: "He could score 3,000 goals, I don't give a f***.

"[Gonzalo] Higuain, [Sergio] Aguero, [Karim] Benzema, [Robert] Lewandowski, [Zlatan] Ibrahimovic and [Luis] Suarez knew how to link-up with the team.

"They knew how to do a lot of things, unlike Ronaldo whose only objective has always been to score."

However, Ronaldo is not the only target Cassano has taken aim at.

He also suggested Erling Haaland was simply a goal machine who does not understand how to play the beautiful game, either.

But his comments about compatriot Jorginho prompted an awkward encounter on the beach between the pair.

That is because Cassano publicly laughed off legitimate suggestions that Jorginho was in the running for the Ballon d'Or after winning the Champions League and Euros in 2021.