Cristiano Ronaldo’s statue in Funchal, capital of his home island of Madeira, has been tagged with the name and shirt number of arch-rival Lionel Messi, according to local press reports.
The graffiti was put on the statue overnight on Tuesday, just hours after Barcelona star Messi claimed a fifth Ballon d’Or award, beating out Real Madrid’s Portuguese striker and three-time winner Ronaldo in the process.
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The name Messi and the No 10, both scrawled in red, had already been cleaned off the statue, the Diario de Noticias da Madeira said.
“It’s a shameful act committed out of jealousy towards him,” said Ronaldo’s sister Katia Aveiro, with pictures of the tagged statue predictably doing the rounds on social media.
Ronaldo unveiled the 3.40-metre-high bronze effigy of himself in December 2014 on the Funchal seafront, a few hundred metres from his own self-financed museum.
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