Did Ronaldo say he regrets leaving Real Madrid?

Hyderabad: A post with a quote purportedly by Manchester United footballer Cristiano Ronaldo is going viral on social media. According to the post, Ronaldo allegedly confessed in an interview with Piers Morgan, "Leaving R. Madrid? Biggest regret of my career. I had respect there, I had love there. If I went back in time, I would play there for free. I should never have left the biggest club in the world. They treated me like a king."

Did Ronaldo really make this confession? Let's find out.

FACT CHECK

NewsMeter performed a keyword search to find media reports about Ronaldo's alleged confession but couldn't find any reports. On performing a simple keyword search we found a report by Daily Star dated 14 November 2022. It clearly said the viral statement was fake.

According to the report, "Piers Morgan has raged online after fake quotes from Cristiano Ronaldo emerged - calling for Twitter CEO Elon Musk to take action. The journalist landed a huge scoop by interviewing the Manchester United star, who slammed the side's current manager, Erik ten Hag, as well as the club itself, saying that he felt 'betrayed'. But someone pretending to pose as a big Real Madrid aggregator's Twitter account has posted some mock-up words that the star said during the interview."

We also found a tweet by Piers Morgan, tweeted from his official handle @PiersUncensored, which clarifies the real agenda of the interview.

Lastly, on analysing the whole interview carefully, we could not spot the purported statement by footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. (Watch the interview here and here.)

Hence, the claim that Ronaldo said he regrets leaving Real Madrid is fake.