Cristiano Ronaldo's insult about Xavi playing in Qatar after Messi comments in 2016 | OneFootball

Cristiano Ronaldo is being peppered with links to Al-Nassr right now.

Officially a free agent having left Manchester United on the back of his explosive interview with Piers Morgan, Ronaldo now finds himself playing in football’s biggest shop window – the World Cup – as potential suitors look on.

However, as the footballing world learnt over the course of the summer, the queue for Ronaldo’s signature amongst European clubs isn’t as long as you might have first thought.

With top sides wary about onboarding a 37-year-old with massive wages straight off the back of a very public dispute with his last club, Jorge Mendes seems to have his work cut out when it comes to securing Ronaldo’s future.

Is Ronaldo signing for Al-Nassr?

And that’s where sides like Al-Nassr come into things, because although they can’t offer Ronaldo Champions League football, they can furnish him with a financially lucrative way to see out his career.

The only question remains: would Ronaldo want to move away from European football and ply his trade in Saudi Arabia when he still rates himself so highly?

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Well, on Monday, the saga took another big twist with Spanish newspaper Marca dropping the bombshell that Ronaldo would be an Al-Nassr player as of January 1 with eye-watering wages purported to be in the region of €200 million.

Now, other sources have either poured water on these claims or tempered them a little – the BBC, for example, simply saying that Al-Nassr have made their offer – but there’s no smoke without fire and there’s a general acknowledgement that the transfer could well happen.

And if it does, then it would arguably represent a change in Ronaldo’s opinion with regards to playing club football in the Middle East.

We say that because the former Manchester United striker used the fact that Xavi ended his career in Qatar, which borders Saudi Arabia, as an insult against him back in 2016.

What did Xavi say about Messi vs Ronaldo?

According to ESPN, Ronaldo was insulting Xavi in the first place because of comments that the Barcelona legend made to Cadena Ser, saying: “Ronaldo is a player of his time, but the problem is that there is another player who has been pretty much the best player in history.

“Ronaldo is extraordinary but compared to Messi, for me and for everyone who likes football, there can be no comparisons.”

What did Ronaldo say about Xavi and Qatar?

Now, given Ronaldo’s elite mentality and constant drive to become the best, you can see why anybody – even if they’re a good friend or ex-teammate of Lionel Messi – picking a player as superior to him would get under his skin.

And according to the Daily Mail, Ronaldo fired back later that week: “The most searched for player on the Internet is me. Those that want to appear on front covers or promote things speak about me.

“What does it matter to me what Xavi says? He plays where? In Qatar or [somewhere], I don’t know. He’s won everything but he’s never won a Ballon d’Or. I have three.”

Meanwhile, the Telegraph interprets the translation of Ronaldo’s comments as: “What do I care what Xavi says? Xavi plays in Qatar, it doesn’t have any relevance.”

Video: Xavi and Ronaldo exchange comments in 2016

Either way, the moral of the story is very clearly Ronaldo belittling Xavi as being irrelevant at the time and part of that being down to the fact that he was playing in Qatar with Al Sadd SC.

Interestingly, at the time of those comments, Xavi was 36 years old and had made the move to the Middle East the previous year, meaning that he was not too dissimilar in age to Ronaldo now as he is continually linked to Al-Nassr.

Granted, times change; maybe Ronaldo’s opinions have evolved and perhaps it was just a cheap insult in the heat of the moment, but you can bet your bottom dollar that fans will tease him about it if he does indeed start playing in the Saudi Professional League.