Correio da Manha TV demand an apology from Cristiano Ronaldo

Portuguese broadcaster Correio da Manhã TV has demanded a formal apology from Cristiano Ronaldo and the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) following an incident in which the national team captain threw a microphone belonging to the station, and being used by one of their journalists into a lake.

Carlos Rodrigues, head of Public Relations at Correio da Manhã TV  feels that the attitude shown by Cristiano Ronaldo towards a professional working in the media as "very serious" and added that in his opinion, "it's an embarrassment to the whole nation" considering that footage of the incident has been shown all around the world and are "far from encouraging".

He continued: "At the very least we believe we deserve to be given a formal apology from Cristiano Ronaldo and the Federation (...) As the captain of the national team, Cristiano Ronaldo has an institutional role to fulfill".

The incident occured while the Portugal squad were taking their daily, morning stroll to unwind ahead of this afternoon's decisive, final group game against Hungary; a broadcast journalist from Correio da Manhã TV went up to the Real Madrid player and asked him if he was prepared for today's game.

Rodrigues added that the station's parent group -Cofina S.A. plans to take measures "which will be announced in due course - to denounce this unacceptable attitude and to ensure that similar incidents do not happen again in the future".

Correio da Manhã TV is the television arm of a magazine of the same name, the most read in Portugal, and which tends towards a sensationalist editorial viewpoint with daily circulation figures of around 100,000.