I LOVE Ronaldo. Not as much as Ronaldo loves Ronaldo, obviously. But I love him in that soft punch in the arm, playful ruffle of that oiled hair sort of way.

I know I do not share this affection with the rest of the world, particularly those who can conjure up in 140 characters all the venom of a Black Mamba who has lost a winning lottery ticket. Ronaldo is as popular on Twitter as Zika Virus is on Tinder.

The 2016 Euros have had several themes. There were the Icelanders who could be forgiven for believing their sole purpose for being on Earth was to remind Scotland of what we are doing wrong. Or not doing at all.

There were the overpaid, underperforming England side who were so awful, so desperate, so hopeless they could only beat Wales.

Ah, the Boyos. They were justifiably praised, although sometimes it all went a bit over the top, like a final scene in a blockbuster movie when a hero saves the world and the plaudits come in from all areas. A sort of Dai Hard, I suppose.

Portugal, in contrast, were painted as a bunch of untalented journeymen led by a preening, posing diva. A sort of Spice Girls of the football pitch with Ronaldo as Mel B, with the B denoting that he was of illegitimate provenance. They could not win a game, the detractors once protested. They may yet win the tournament. They are, after all, in the final.

Thus the narrative was that Gareth Bale was a mixture of the Dalai Lama and Superman and Ronaldo was the result of a diabolical twinning of that thing that came out of John Hurt’s stomach in Alien and the biggest walloper in the Bullingdon Club.

Bale, it seems, danced through opponents, pausing only to pay the hospital bills of his team mates’ elderly relatives, before smiting the ball into the net. He then celebrated by individually praising each of his comrades for their role in the goal, however tangential, before posing cutely for Daddy of the Year with his daughter.

Ronaldo, in comparison, threatened his team mates with circumcision without anaesthetic for a pass that was two millimetres beyond his manicured toe. He stole sweeties from the children at the edge of the park, took rugs off the pensioners in wheelchairs and spat, and pouted, and strutted and was, well, perfectly beastly

Now, I know guys who know Bale. They tell me he is everything he seems on-screen. A good guy, a dedicated athlete, a team-mate who values the collective. He is also a very, very good footballer. But I now guys who know Ronaldo, too. They say precisely the same about him, before adding that he is the greatest of footballers.

Yup, he may have squatted to the side during a penalty shoot-out. Yup, he sometimes looks less than elated when a team-mate scores. And, yes, his celebrations can be, well, somewhat contrived, even egocentric. But the simple truth is that if Bale carried Wales, then Ronaldo carried Portugal that bit further. It is what he does.

Briefly, Ronaldo scores more than a goal a game for Real Madrid and hits the net in every second game for an international side he has played for 130 times. He is prolific but reliable. He has played with distinction for Portugal in seven major tournaments. He never hides during games. Though, to be honest, that would be akin to expecting Bette Midler not to break out in song when the orchestra strikes up.

Those who know such things have whispered that Ronaldo is not fully fit. Certainly, his performances in the Champions League final and in most of the Euros have been conspicuously restrained by his standards that are as high as John Belushi at a wrap party on board the Space Shuttle. Ronaldo’s relative lack of form and the stress of trying to meet the expectations of a nation have contributed to his slightly tetchy demeanour, best illustrated when he threw a microphone into a lake with the enthusiasm of a sports editor rejecting a Setterday column.

But the measure of the sportsman is what he does on the pitch. The rest is public relations. Ronaldo basically beat Wales. His first goal was of the sort that traditional centre-forwards would stick in the front page of their scrapbook. A powerful leap was complemented by a decisive header. Then Ronaldo set up Nani, almost certainly unwittingly, but a set-up nevertheless.

There will be those, of course, who will prefer to reflect on the boy from Madeira’s inability to hit the ball over the defensive wall or his reluctance to celebrate one of his goals with a manly handshake and a shrug of self-deprecation.

But I feel the need to acknowledge his greatness. The truth is that Ronaldo is a star who craves attention and demands applause. But he is far from alone in this in the sporting world and his achievements insist he must be respected if not be the object of adoration. He will be feared on Sunday in the final. But he will be loved by a nation and by the team-mates who know that if they are to make history they need the traditional input from their resident genius.