[imagesource: Twitter / @c7world]
It wasn’t a great weekend for Manchester United fans.
Their team lost to relegation-threatened Everton, while Spurs won convincingly at Aston Villa to extend the gap to fourth place.
Then, following the final whistle at Goodison Park, Cristiano Ronaldo was filmed slapping a phone from the hands of an Everton fan to add a social media controversy into the mix.
Sarah Kelly and her 14-year-old son, who is autistic, had just watched their first Premier League match together before the slap occurred.
No capitals, because The Slap remains the Oscars moment that will go down in infamy.
There are a few different angles showing Saturday’s incident:
Ronaldo smashing someone’s phone after fulltime… the most arrogant footballer ever pic.twitter.com/iVm3KRhsXP
— Hamza (@lapulgafreak) April 9, 2022
Clear angle
Ronaldo smashed the kids phone is pretty clear now pic.twitter.com/s1Pn24BXSU
— Hamza (@lapulgafreak) April 9, 2022
Naturally, many Manchester United fans on social media rallied behind Ronaldo, showing the abuse their players were subjected to as they left the field:
Ronaldo had every right to smash his phone pic.twitter.com/UzBVW1aVHU
— ToTo (@UTDkingsley) April 10, 2022
As is customary with these sorts of things, Ronaldo took to social media to apologise:
View this post on Instagram
Kelly, however, was less than impressed with the superstar. Here’s The Telegraph:
She says that Jacob could not sleep on Saturday night, that his phone is broken and that he suffered pain to the inside of his thumb, as well as apparent bruising on his hand. Jacob has dyspraxia as well as autism and so struggles with certain fine motor-skills, such as holding a pen or fastening buttons and zips.
“The apology or lack of apology was what angered me even more,” said Sarah. “I thought, ‘How rude – you are telling everybody you have apologised and you haven’t’. OK, you have put it out to social media but …you should be apologising to my son.
“He [Ronaldo] had several hours to ponder on it. He should have found out our contact details… been private, said he had spoken to us and released something. I would have been happy with that.”
Following the above interview, one of Ronaldo’s representatives did contact the family directly, as well as a representative from Manchester United.
Kelly says they’re unlikely to take up Ronaldo’s offer of a ticket to Old Trafford. Below from the Manchester Evening News:
“It was our first time [together at football]. Jacob is obsessed with Everton and football. It’s his passion. It just took a complete shine off the game, the win, the experience. I’m not even thinking of the day I had with him, the nice time before the incident. I’m just thinking of the last five seconds. It has completely spoilt it. It’s shocking.”
…”That comes across really, really rude to me. Why would we, as Everton fans, go to United? He put, ‘this supporter’, it doesn’t state if he was an Everton supporter or a United supporter. It’s just a very, very weak apology in my opinion.”
She added that her son said ‘No, mum, I would never want to see him again’ in reference to Ronaldo’s offer.
Clearly, the players are as frustrated as the fans. As another disappointing Manchester United season peters out, whoever takes over from interim manager Ralf Rangnick has quite a task on their hands.
[sources:telegraph&manevenews]
