How Ronaldo inspires Fernandes to be better

“My mentality comes a little bit from understanding what sort of player you want to be. Do you want to be that player who has a good season, and maybe goes up and down, up and down, or do you want to be the player who always wants to be at the top? Okay, you will have bad games for sure, everyone has – Cristiano has had bad games, 100 per cent – but the point is, coming back from a bad game.

”Coming back with the mentality that is, ‘okay I didn’t play well in that last game and I really need to do well in this one’. The mentality to do better day after day is really important for me. I’m improving a lot because of this, and that was my biggest motivation.

“There are a lot of matches that have inspired me,” he continued. “If you watch, in the world of football, the final of the Champions League, of the Euros or the World Cups, it’s difficult to choose one.

”But I think, for me, as a Portuguese, the final of the 2016 Euros is an inspiration for every kid. At that moment, I was not a kid anymore but the inspiration for every Portuguese player, for example, because we’d never won anything in the national team. We arrived at that moment against every chance to win that Euros so, as a Portuguese, I’m really proud of that and it’s one of the games I remember more.“