Why is the soccer world ignoring the Ronaldo story ?

12-09-2021 01:58AM #1

I have been genuinely gobsmacked that this story has not been mentioned much in the media or by the soccer world since his return to England.

The accusations are as serious as you can get but it feels like the soccer world don’t know what to do with it other than just try to ignore it.

<Mod Snip>

The conversation should be about how, as soccer fans, we can talk about this and understand what’s happening and why.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/cristiano-ronaldo-kathryn-mayorga-the-woman-who-accuses-ronaldo-of-rape-a-1230634.html

~Rebel~ · 12-09-2021 03:51AM

Max Rushden at the Guardian did a decent piece on this a few days ago... not just on this subject, but on the conversation itself and how its approached (or not) in football.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/sep/09/cristiano-ronaldo-return-manchester-united-awkward-conversations-as-well-as-cheers

Just in general, football is really bad at talking about this stuff. The Neymar one is the same - dropped completely by Nike (what should be a pretty huge story even just on its own!) after allegations of sexual misconduct towards one of their staff, and after him actively obstructing the case (much like Ronaldo in this instance). As the Rushden piece mentions, the Kingsley Coman thing never really gets mentioned either, despite having admitted guilt. Somewhat similar to the issues around sportwashing, football (and a majority of fans) seem very ready to turn a blind eye to aspects it finds distasteful, putting the value of 'escape' ahead of real world consequences.

12-09-2021 04:00AM

I had read that but wasn’t too impressed.

He said something without saying anything really. I’ll read it again now though.

It would be nice to know how supported the journalists or pundits are by their employers.

If you work for the BBC or Sky, for example, but don’t want to cover games that involve M United will you be encouraged to do so or are you risking your job.

There must be plenty of journalists, pundits, commentators, and so on, that don’t want to cover his games while these accusations hang over him.

I will be especially disappointed if I see females, working in the industry, willing to turn a blind eye too.

~Rebel~ · 12-09-2021 04:03AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117879211#Comment_117879211

Yeah, it's more of a question asker than answerer alright, but I appreciated that he put something out there that shone a light on the subject at least. I can forgive the possible lack of real depth in this instance too, since he's spending 2 weeks locked in a small room with his wife quarantining to enter Australia at the moment :p

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I don't think i'd be harsher on women in the industry than men though - i know where you're coming from, but that lets the guys off the hook a little bit, when it's a subject I think everyone has equal responsibility to address.

12-09-2021 04:07AM

Yeah. I definitely wasn’t poo pooing the article but I would have liked to read some possible solutions.

It’s much better to have people writing about it than not.

machiavellianme · 12-09-2021 08:07AM

I don't care much about what players do off the field but this kind of incident is completely unacceptable. I don't know what happened that night so won't pretend I'm 100% on either side but the fact that it's not discussed more openly is almost as bad as the despicable act itself. A day in court likely won't happen and that irks me. This should not be swept under the carpet, regardless of who the player is. This needs to be discussed and at the very least it might discourage future incidents.

Iago · 12-09-2021 01:14PM

an equally pertinant question is why have YOU ignored it for 12 years? did you not have a mother, sister etc then as well?

I mean, we all know the answer so that's as much airtime as I'm going to give this thread.

DM_7 · 12-09-2021 01:24PM

Mod: Op starts a conversation asking posters to post in a certain way while posting categorically that a crime took place. That in itself would get a thread locked but since boards can't host such claims thread was always destined to be locked.

Why is the soccer world ignoring the Ronaldo story ?

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