Ronaldo joins select list of Ireland's pantomime villains, but we'll easily forgive him
Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo hands the arm band to team-mate Bernardo Silva after being shown a red card during the 2026 FIFA World Cup European Qualifying, Group F match at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland. Picture date: Thursday November 13, 2025.
The catalogue of Irish international football’s true pantomime villains is surprisingly slim and contains few household names. Perhaps disappointment and rage is so regularly encountered that we rarely take it too personally. But a few baddies have properly taken centre stage and seized full enemy of the state status, notably…
Top of every list and the only footballing villain to jeopardise sales of crusted bread. Nobody has really let this one go, bar Arsenal fans and Roy Keane. His offence remains the compulsory line of questioning should a French man or woman have any reason to appear on the Late Late.
Seems a grand lad, but his is a hard act to forgive, compounded by that non-celebration celebration when England trounced us. For all his kissing of various badges, you suspect gooners will one day soon empathise when he treats an unveiling presser to his fluent Spanish.
The bearded Belgian villain put the tin hat on Ireland’s outrageous persecution in Brussels in 1981 with a spectacular late dive that earned the free-kick for Jan Ceulemans’ winner. As the new book on Ireland’s 1982 World Cup qualifying campaign, , puts it: “Gerets attacks the Irish box to the right of the ‘D’ and launches himself into the area in an effort to win a penalty. The dive is extraordinary. The dive is comical. But Raul Fernandes Nazaré is convinced that a free kick 20 yards from the Irish goal is warranted.”
Which brings us to…
“Ladrão, ladrão”. At the final whistle, Liam Brady went to the trouble of getting Mickey Walsh to tell him the Portuguese for ‘cheat’. He needn’t have bothered since Nazare’s English was fine. Disallowing Frank Stapleton’s first-half goal for mystery reasons that he couldn’t quite explain, despite Paul Howard's memorable efforts in tracking him down, was Raul’s chief offence. And he has since endured as the patron sinner of every referee who shafted us over the decades.
— Paul Howard (@AkaPaulHoward) March 30, 2022
You remember him alright. Cut of Russell Brand, but better at the attention seeking. The Israel keeper/thespian who put on a time-wasting masterclass in a costly Lansdowne 2-2 in 2005, crowning his efforts with a brilliant bit of stagework, as Jimmy Magee would put it, to get Andy O'Brien sent off. To give Dudu his due, if he hadn't made a magnificent late point-blank save from John O'Shea too, we'd have long forgotten him.
Did we ever catch his name? What we do know, thanks to George Hamilton, is this officious sideline observer at Ireland v Mexico in Orlando existed “nowhere in the firmament of international football”. That didn’t, of course, prevent the lad detaining John Aldridge from coming on and copping a choice mouthful of scouse in return. As George noted, “the Americans have been very fond of their peaked caps and self-importance". At the same time, he did inspire one of the great football songs, by My Brother Woody.
Definitely centre stage. Certainly an act of villainy. For sure one we’ll always remember. But the beauty of Cristiano’s perfect bit of theatre on Thursday night is for once we came out the right side. He has made a national hero of the lad in the crowd who gave the crying eyes back to him. If it goes wrong for Heimir on Sunday, he now carries the kudos that goes with melting an icon’s head. Cristiano promised to be a good boy, he hoped we wouldn’t boo him. He was disappointed on both fronts. But for this pantomime performance for the ages, we'll easily forgive him.
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