Walid Regragui has had his say on Cristiano Ronaldo's crisis with Portugal.
The former Morocco coach spoke on Canal+ programme Football Club, with Foot Mercato publishing his verdict on the whole affair.
Regragui said: "Ronaldo has given a great deal. The status that many Portuguese players have gained, as well as Portuguese football itself, is down to Cristiano."
He continued: "That doesn't give him the right to do whatever he wants, but I think everything in this final stage has been handled badly. I believe someone should have sat down with him and told him: listen, we have to stop here."
There was also the matter of the coach, a man Ronaldo had worked with at Al-Nassr. "They must have spoken beforehand about whether or not he would carry on. Both parties have harmed themselves, and that is regrettable."
Then came the comparison. Regragui set Ronaldo's treatment in Portugal against what Lionel Messi gets in Argentina, and for him the gap is glaring.
He stressed: "I think Ronaldo, driven by pride, also wants to reach 1,000 goals, and perhaps he wants to achieve that in the Portugal shirt. But the end result is that it creates a negative image."
He added: "What I want to say is that this would never have happened in Argentina. The reverence Argentinians have for Messi, and that the players have for him too, I have never felt that the Portuguese have anything like it for Ronaldo at all."
He concluded: "The Portuguese have never wanted to run and fight for Ronaldo, whereas the Argentinians accepted that with Messi, even at the last World Cup. In Portugal, that was not accepted at all."