Fans and experts alike call the 38-year-old AL Nassr star the best of all time because of how great his career has been.

He became famous with Real Madrid after signing for Manchester United when he was still a teenager. He is now one of the biggest names in sports around the world.

His happiness is tinged with sadness when he thinks about his difficult family life with an alcoholic father who missed his meteoric rise.

Dad José Dinis Aveiro passed away in 2005 from liver failure. Ronaldo was only 20 years old at the time, and had already been playing at Old Trafford for two years.

When asked about the death of his father, he broke down in tears in an interview with Piers Morgan.

Ronaldo tells Piers Morgan on ITV’s Cristiano Ronaldo Meets Piers Morgan, “I really don’t know my father 100%.”

“He was drunk.” Just talking with him wasn’t something I did. It was tough.

“To be number one and he doesn’t see anything, to win awards and see what I became.”

José Dinis Aveiro was compelled to join the army and fought a war that not many people liked in order to keep the region of Angola from becoming independent from Portugal.

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He and his fellow soldiers saw horrible things that hurt their minds during the war that they lost.

The living conditions were terrible, and soldiers went half-starved when food came spoiled.

Even worse, sickness spread through the camp. For weeks, many men who had malaria, chills, shakes, and fever were stuck in their sick beds and couldn’t move.

Cuca, an Angolan beer, was what the men mostly drank because the water from a nearby river was too warm to drink and wasn’t safe.

All of this hurt Aveiro, and when he got home from serving his country, he was a broken man.

A BRAND NEW LIFE

Aveiro got back to Portugal after 13 months in Africa, where he fought in Mozambique. He didn’t know much about the country.

The military government that ran the country spent a lot of money on the war, which caused the economy to crash very badly.

Madeira didn’t have any work, and Aveiro was poor. His friends bought him drinks in bars because they knew he was a veteran.

“We were abandoned,” friend and fellow soldier Jose Manuel Coelho told ESPN. They had no money and no work after the war.

“Of course when I see Ronaldo, I remember his dad: He had problems and didn’t have anything to eat, so he would turn to drinking.”His friends would get him drinks. He had no cash on hand. He didn’t eat right.”

KITT MAN

Aveiro first worked as a gardener, and then he added to his income by becoming a kit man for the Andorinha team, which is based in the town of Santo Antonio, Funchal.

It was his job to clean up the locker rooms and make sure that all of the players’ gear was clean.

He got the job because Ronaldo played for the team, but his son’s friends made fun of him because his dad had such a bad job.

But that made Ronaldo want to do better and show the people who made fun of him that he couldn’t be hurt.

Aveiro was also often seen drinking in a small bar at the club while the hours went by.

Ronaldo did everything he could to save his father’s life, but death was going to happen anyway.

He promised Aveiro that he would be the best football player in the world and was with him when he died.

He never broke his word, and he has since won the Ballon d’Or five times, which is a record.

His father never got to see his amazing success, though.