Ronaldo quits Portugal's camp, and ESPN FC's panel calls it farcical
With Frank Leboeuf, Shaka Hislop and Gab Marcotti on the sofa, the Ronaldo reaction passed the show's own Manchester City talk from the same day within hours, and the comments keep going back to 2022.
ESPN UKStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 267,662 views a day, 42 times a normal first day on this channel (6,449).
‘ABSOLUTELY FARCICAL!’ Cristiano Ronaldo leaves Portugal camp after rumoured rift | ESPN FC
"‘ABSOLUTELY FARCICAL!’" is how ESPN FC's title puts it. Cristiano Ronaldo has left the Portugal camp after a rumored rift with Jorge Jesus, and host Alexis Nunes brought in Gab Marcotti, Shaka Hislop and Frank Leboeuf to make sense of it on ESPN UK.
Seven hours after it went up, the video had passed 100,000 views. A new upload here usually gathers around six thousand on its whole first day, so this one is running at roughly forty times that pace. Manchester City's charges have carried the channel for days, as we reported here, and the same panel's City video from the same day is now behind the Ronaldo reaction. The Women's Champions League clips posted alongside it, in English and in French, sit in the hundreds and low thousands.
The panel knows dressing rooms. Leboeuf won the 1998 World Cup with France and spent years at Chelsea, Hislop kept goal for Newcastle and West Ham, and Marcotti is one of ESPN's most-read European football writers. The other name in the title belongs to one of Portuguese football's best-known coaches. Jesus won the Copa Libertadores with Flamengo in 2019 and later coached Al Hilal in Riyadh, across the city from Ronaldo's Al Nassr.
Many viewers reach back to Manchester United in 2022, when Ronaldo's exit followed his television interview with Piers Morgan, and the running joke under the video is about who gets the next phone call. Others bring up Alex Ferguson. Several Portuguese viewers weigh in on both men, and not all of them on Ronaldo's side.
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What viewers say
Next : Interview with Piers Morgan
@JustForFun-zz2hbSee it on YouTube"Ronaldo will tell us the truth." No, he will tell us his truth.
@criticalthinking8982See it on YouTubeAs a Portuguese all I'll say is this: I'm just so happy that finally Jorge Jesus is Portugal's coach!😁
@tnightwolfSee it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- ESPN UK
- Subscribers
- 1,600,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,479,422 (on a normal day: 997,596)
- Video published
- September 30, 2026
- Video views so far
- 108,181 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 267,662
The numbers
One Ronaldo reaction moved faster than anything else the channel posted the same day.
💡 Test your knowledge
Portugal won its first major international tournament at which championship?
Portugal beat host nation France 1-0 in the final in Saint-Denis, with Eder scoring in extra time.
