Paulo Dybala is one of the few group of players who have been teammates of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Dybala currently plays at Italian club Roma, having joined the Giallorossi from Juventus as a free agent this summer.
He spent three years as a teammate of Ronaldo at the Bianconeri, with the two players often being paired together in attack in Turin.
During these years, Dybala was a key player for the Argentina international team alongside their talisman Messi.
The attacker has been part of the South American nation’s squad for winning the Copa America in 2021 and the World Cup in Qatar last year.
Alongside Ronaldo, he won three consecutive Serie A titles with Juventus. The Portuguese superstar joined the Old Lady in the summer of 2018 – and scored 101 goals across his stint in Italy.
Dybala has now revealed a conversation he had with Ronaldo before a Juventus game, admitting to his teammate that his background as an Argentine had led to him ‘hating’ him due to his intense long-term sporting rivalry with Messi.
“I spent three nice years with Cristiano, the team was very strong and he added something more,” Dybala told an interview with DAZN, in quotes carried by Football Italia.
“There’s a big rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo in Argentina. Once, we were flying out for a game, I was sitting at the back of the plane and he was slightly ahead.
‘’At some point, he came to me, we spoke about life in general for a while, and I told him: ‘As a kid, I practically hated you.’ We laughed about it and we’ve always been on good terms.”
Dybala’s previous thoughts on Ronaldo were no deterrent to the players forming an understanding at Juve, with other Argentines – such as Higuain, Gabriel Heinze and Lisandro Martinez – playing alongside Ronaldo at club level throughout his career.
