At the height of their frenzied, and now largely discredited, anti-Ronny campaign in the late noughties, Eamon Dunphy disclosed that John Giles reckoned that Alex Ferguson was in love with Cristiano Ronaldo. That he actually fancied him.
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/264566476" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]
This flippant assessment received belated vindication tonight when Fergie expressed his appreciation of 'the boy Ronaldo' and his 'beautiful body'.
Rory McIlroy and Alex Ferguson sat down with professional Manchester United fan Jimmy Nesbitt in the Convention Centre tonight.
An Evening With Rory will raise money for the Rory Foundation.
This is, of course, just a normal Tuesday evening for the retired Alex Ferguson. We were lucky enough to catch a look at Fergie's hectic weekly schedule a short while ago.
In a discussion about 'hard work' - Fergie can't speak highly enough of it - he alluded to Ronaldo's prodigious work-rate and his maniacal determination to become the best footballer in the world.
He made reference to Ronaldo's legendary vanity, proclaiming it a 'nice vanity' as opposed to the unpleasant vain person that is not nice to be around. This eyebrow-raising claim will not find favour among many football fans who regard Ronaldo as the poster boy for the not nice form of vanity. But then Fergie knew him better.
He had that lovely vanity. You know, some people have got a vanity that you don't enjoy. But he had that nice vanity. And he used to stand in front of the mirror with that beautiful body of his. And the players were throwing jockstraps and boots at him.
And he's going 'You're jealous, you're jealous!'
He went on to describe the boy Ronaldo's new gaff which is purpose built to make him become a better player than Lionel Messi, decked out with a cold pool and a hot pool, an ice room where temperatures descend to -160 degrees...
Fergie gives Ronaldo the upper hand on Lionel on the basis that Messi is 'a Barcelona player', meaning he is a kind of football equivalent of a 'system quarterback'.
Ronaldo, he asserts, could play for Stockport County.
