Cristiano Ronaldo received two of the highest honors a person can get on Wednesday morning. He had an airport in his native country named after him and he received a bronze statue made in his likeness. Pretty cool, huh?
Yeah, about that.
So the airport renaming is pretty cool. Even though Cristiano Ronaldo Airport, formerly known as Aeroporto da Madeira, is just the fourth-biggest airport in Portugal, there aren’t many living people who can point to an airport and say, "Check me out." But the statue? Well, let’s just say that we used "made in his likeness" in the loosest of terms in the previous paragraph.
If you turn the brightness on your laptop or smartphone all the way down and go stand across the room and look at a photo of the bust, it kind of looks like Ronaldo. But even then, who did the airport commission to create that thing? This guy?
No, as it turns out, it was a sculptor named Emanuel Santos, and he has already come out and defended his creation in the most extreme way possible—by comparing himself to Jesus. "It’s impossible to please the Greeks and the Trojans. Not even Jesus pleased everyone," he told Globo Esporte. "This is a matter of taste, it’s not as simple as it seems. I have seen the work of great artists that follow this parameter. What matters is the impact this work generated."
Ronaldo smiled for the cameras and didn’t seem all that upset over the fact that his statue looks nothing like him. But of course, the internet and all of the Photoshoppers out there had a field day with the statue once it was unveiled and went in on it accordingly. Scroll down to see some of the shots people took at it:
A statue is a statue, and even though it doesn’t bear a strong resemblance (or any resemblance) to him, we imagine Ronaldo is still thrilled to have it. But didn’t anyone realize it didn't look like him before the big unveiling?
