Sculptor defends his Ronaldo statue after the big internet pisstake

Look, right: you just don’t get the Cristiano Ronaldo statue. 

Just because you look at CR7’s gleaming bronze effigy and see Art Attack’s The Head, or Niall Quinn, or some chap from Sheffield who’s gone a bit too hard at that twice-a-year acid house night that only people in their 40s go to, it doesn’t mean that it’s a botch job. It’s all a matter of taste. 

So says the statue’s sculptor, Madeiran artist Emanuel Santos, responding to internet mickey-taking regarding his masterpiece. Which, in case it hasn’t yet etched itself into your brain forever, looks like this. 

According to Santos, the sculpture, which was revealed to the world at a Madeira airport being named after the Real Madrid forward, took three weeks to make before it was sent to the Portuguese mainland to be cast in bronze. 

He defended his work, explaining that the design process is much harder than it looks (absolutely fair enough, we can barely build a dog with Play-Doh), reports The Guardian. 

“It is impossible to please the Greeks and Trojans. Neither did Jesus please everyone,” the sculptor said, in the best opening to an impassioned rebuttal we’ve heard for quite some time. “This is a matter of taste, so it is not as simple as it seems. What matters is the impact that this work generated. There is always the possibility of making a difference, I was prepared for all this. I used as a base some photos of Cristiano Ronaldo that I found on the internet, nothing specific. I put the photos next to me and started working on the bust.”

Santos added that the current Ballon d'Or holder actually gave the statue his blessing before its official unveiling. He was sent the photos by his brother, and seemed to approve of his grand tribute. “He only asked for some wrinkles that give him a certain expression in his face when he’s about to laugh to be changed,” he said of Ronaldo’s assessment. “He said it made him look older and asked for it to be thinned out a bit to make it smoother and more jovial. But they gave it the go-ahead; they liked what they saw.”

So there you have it, haters. Ronnie is a fan. Suck it.