Cristiano Ronaldo’s statue on his home island of Madeira has been vandalised with Lionel Messi’s name and shirt number painted on it. The graffiti appeared on the statue in the island’s capital Funchal on Tuesday night shortly after Barcelona’s Messi claimed a fifth Ballon d’Or ahead of the Real Madrid star.
Messi’s name and the number 10, both scrawled in red, had been removed on Wednesday after officials were alerted to the damage.
“It’s a shameful act committed out of jealousy towards him,” said Ronaldo’s sister Katia Aveiro. The rage that some unloved and frustrated fatheads display in public in a disgraceful way which leaves me as a Portuguese person ashamed and sad.”
Ronaldo unveiled the 11-foot bronze effigy of himself in December 2014 on the Funchal seafront, a few hundred metres from his own self-financed museum.
SkySports