Cristiano Ronaldo ‘concedes’ Men’s Best Player Award to Haaland in Classy Gesture; Video

• Cristiano Ronaldo conceded Haaland beat him with a classy gesture
• The Portugal superstar was spotted gesturing towards Haaland at the Globe Soccer Awards
• Haaland beat Ronaldo, Messi, Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe among others to the award

Cristiano Ronaldo exhibited pure class at the Globe Soccer Awards moments before the winner of the Best Men’s Player was announced.

The 38-year-old is the epitome of elite mentality and is still highly competitive despite being in the twilight years of his glittery football career.

Ronaldo was up for another individual accolade, this time coming up against much younger competition including Haaland, Kylian Mbappe and Bayern Munich’s Harry Kane.

This was no formality, however, as the five-time Ballon d’Or winner stood a genuine chance of actually winning the award, thanks to his incredible feat of emerging as the top scorer for the calendar year 2023.

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However, it was not meant to be for Ronaldo, as Haaland, who had an equally stellar year both as an individual and with his club, Manchester City, ended up beating all competition to collect the award.

Ronaldo ‘knew’ he lost to Haaland

An interesting video shared by @totalcristiano on X has since emerged online showing Ronaldo seemingly ‘endorsing’ Haaland for the win.

As the announcer was gearing up to name the winner of the Best Men’s Player in Dubai, a split camera showed Ronaldo and Haaland side by side as the two went toe-to-toe for the award.

But unlike in previous editions of individual accolades where Ronaldo was the favourite to win, the 38-year-old did not seem too bothered and was seen pointing in the direction of Haaland as if to suggest the award should go to the 23-year-old striker.

One could argue Ronaldo knew he would have to settle for second place, but this did not take away from the fact that it was a decent show of class for the Portugal forward to acknowledge Haaland’s prowess in world football at the moment.

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During the same awards, Ronaldo also gave a brilliant speech about ‘young lions’ , referring to Haaland and PSG forward Mbappe.

“imagine beating young animals like Haaland… I’m proud. And I’ll be 39 soon!” Ronaldo said, per Fabrizio Romano.

Haaland’s reaction to Cristiano’s comment

In the same award ceremony, cameras captured Erling Haaland’s nonchalant reaction to Cristiano Ronaldo dubbing himself the ‘best goal scorer’.

As Sports Brief reported, Haaland was just a couple of goals shy of Ronaldo’s 54-goal haul in 2023, and this can be attributed to the fact that he missed a number of games towards the end of the year.