Piers Morgan says Cristiano Ronaldo staged their interview to force a move out of Manchester United.

United terminated Ronaldo's contract, with no compensation, in reaction to his interview with Morgan the previous week.

Morgan told FS1: "If he knew his bomb would cause him to leave Manchester United? To be completely honest, I think he knew it. Cristiano is very intelligent, he knows what he is doing. He and I have built a relationship that goes back a few years now, and when he called me, he said to me, 'I want to do an interview, I mean everything'.

"I said, 'If you say everything I think you're going to say, then you're probably going to have to leave the club'. He replied, 'I know'. So he knew what he was getting into.

"He didn't think it was a certainty, he didn't mean in the interview: 'I'm leaving definitively' or 'I'm going to leave United'. But he was a man who, at the end of his mandate, felt that he was not respected by the coach, (Erik) Ten Hag, by the owners, that he said he had never met (and) by club leaders, who did not even believe him when he said that his daughter was sick.

"So when you put it all together, you have a guy who is not respected, when I think he is the best to have ever played this game. He said enough."