Cristiano Ronaldo’s cowardly Portugal retirement is the exit his egotism deserves

OPINION – BRENT A GOB: This week, Harry is taking a swipe at Cristiano Ronaldo following his retirement from international football, and at Tottenham for trying to ban a journalist

Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal career is finally over – and he’s going out like his World Cup knockout goal record: a complete and utter embarrassment.

Calling it a day now is a bit rich considering his legs retired five years ago. Still, for a man who hasn’t tracked back since 2011, it’s remarkable watching him furiously pump his thighs as he sprints for the hills just to avoid owning up to his latest petulant tantrum.

He knew the axe was swinging, so he jumped before he was pushed – just like he used to inside the penalty box at Old Trafford. If you think it’s a coincidence that his goodbye announcement came hours before Jorge Jesus named a Portugal squad without him in it, you’re denser than the slab of Botox Ronaldo pumps into eyebrows every morning.

Make sure you never miss the most fun content in sport by making the Daily Star one of your Google preferred sources.

This is a man who dropped a 2,000-word hissy fit about how Jesus wouldn’t let him play in the sandpit on the very day Lionel Messi played his final match for Argentina. He can’t stand being out of the limelight any more than he can stand squaring the ball to an unmarked team-mate.

He’s a master manipulator. But since he can’t manipulate football matches anymore he has to make do with manipulating narratives – narratives that are more tired and predictable than Alan Hansen’s punditry.

With all the dignity of Boris Johnson caught with his trousers round his ankles, Ronaldo crowned himself the greatest footballer of all time, then tried to claim that goals and trophies don’t matter to him as much as “how he made people feel.”

That’s about as believable as a level-headed Liverpool fan. No one is fooled by the pantomime anymore. If he had any shred of humility or self-awareness, he’d have stepped aside years ago.

Instead, he bows out of international football in fittingly pathetic fashion – as an irrelevant, self-obsessed toddler screaming into the void while his Portugal team-mates quietly breathe a sigh of relief.

Tottenham Hot-heads throw tantrum

Tottenham have got a bee in their bonnet and it’s the most embarrassing thing to come out of North London since N-Dubz. They’ve thrown a full-blown institutional tantrum, demanding a Brazilian journalist be stripped of his credentials because he had the audacity to wear an Arsenal top and sing a few mean songs about Spurs in a social media video.

This complete non-scandal deserves the exact same reaction every world class footballer gives when he finds out Tottenham want to sign him: a snort of laughter and a dismissive “who gives a toss?”

They can dress it up as defending the club’s honour all they want, but it just makes the pearl-clutchers in the Spurs boardroom look more insecure than Michael Carrick’s Manchester United contract.

So a reporter called the club s***. Big deal. The entire press box does that every single Saturday afternoon – they just stretch it out over an 800-word match report.

There’s a fine line between pathetic insecurity and tinpot authoritarianism, but Tottenham – like Xi Jinping banning Winnie the Pooh because the internet pointed out they look alike – have somehow managed to straddle both.

It would comfortably be the silliest, most braindead thing they’ve done all season, had they not already blown £85million on Savio.