Ronaldo says his son’s death was ‘the most difficult moment of my life’

Cristiano Ronaldo says the death of his baby son was “the most difficult moment I had in my life.”

As part of a wide-ranging interview with Piers Morgan for TalkTV, which will be released in full on Wednesday, Ronaldo has hit out at Manchester United and criticised his manager Erik ten Hag, among others.

In a further snippet of the interview released on Tuesday, Ronaldo spoke of the tragic moment in April when he and his partner Georgina Rodriguez lost their son during childbirth.

“It was probably the worst moment that I passed through in my life since my father died,” Ronaldo said.

“When you have a kid you expect that everything will be normal, and you have that problem, it’s hard. As a human being, me and Georgina had quite difficult moments because we didn’t understand why it happened to us.

“It was difficult, to be honest, it was very difficult to understand what is going on in that period of our life.

“As you know, the football carries on, it’s so fast, there are so many competitions… and passing through that is probably the most difficult moment that I had in my life, for me and my family, especially Geo. That was tough.”

Rodriguez gave birth to a baby girl, who is about to turn seven months old, and Portugal captain Ronaldo – who is currently preparing for the World Cup in Qatar – says he did not know how to react at the time.

“I tried to explain to my family and close friends: ‘I never felt to be so happy and sad in the same moment’,” he added. “It’s hard to explain, so difficult. You don’t know if you [should] cry or smile, because it’s something [where] you don’t know how to react.

“You don’t know what to do, to be honest.”