Sighting of first not-entirely-straight professional footballer turns out to be false alarm

Memo to famous people - if you must spend time with prostitutes, take a few minutes beforehand to get your story straight in case the police get involved. The Brazilian Ronaldo, you may recall, found himself soaked in infamy last week when the ladies of the night he contracted to help him get over “a silly fight” he’d had with his girlfriend turned out to be trannies with an appetite for blackmail.

As a result, “Il Fenomeno” found himself having to talk to one of Brazil’s top talk shows - “Fantastico” - last Sunday to clear up the public’s confusion about why one of their sporting legends and lover of many great beauties should have time in his diary for such creatures,

The great centre forward, sitting in his mother’s garden and not feeling particularly fantastico himself after spending the week crying, said “I did something really stupid and now my image is going to be stained for ever because of this incident. I let myself down and made a grave mistake.”

“I caused a problem that has had huge international repercussions. The biggest mistake was to pick up prostitutes when I have a girlfriend, which I regret very much and feel very ashamed about.”

On the incident itself, Ronaldo said, “When I found out they were transvestites, I tried to “conclude the episode” by paying what we’d agreed. Two of them were OK with that, but the third wasn’t and started to blackmail me. I am straight and have no doubts about that. “There were no (sexual) relations, because as soon as I found out, I took the team off the field. I am completely heterosexual.”

“It was a ridiculous situation because everyone who knows me knows my preferences. ”

Unfortunately for the blackmailer Andreia Albertini, she didn’t know the star well enough to know those preferences included spending the rest of the night with her in the company of the Rio police department. Given the speed with which the forces of law and order alerted the world’s press to Ronaldo’s misfortune, however, the footballer might prefer to take his chances with the men in dresses in future.

Fortunately for the world’s underprivileged children, the incident has not interfered with his work as a worldwide ambassador for UNICEF, and in other good news, it also serves to demonstrate that his badly damaged ankle ligaments are healing nicely. The search for a professional footballer prepared to admit that they occasionally enjoy a little male company, however, goes on.