Ronaldo's tunnel vision by ED of Eurosport

When discussing Cristiano Ronaldo's dubious ability on free-kicks yesterday morning, Early Doors mentioned his uncanny knack of hitting the wall.

Little more than an hour later, he did just that in a two-day-old Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano that cost him nearly a fortnight's wages.

On his way to training, Ronaldo's car hit a roadside barrier inside a tunnel and bounced off a wall, leaving a smoking pile of precision Italian engineering by the side of the road.

Mike Riley immediately awarded a penalty and sent the wall off, even though replays showed it made no contact with the player.

As soon as pictures emerged of Ronaldo's wrecked Ferrari, people inevitably started to use the 'D' word.

No, not d***head. Diana.

The similarities between the two crashes were eerie. Well, both involved expensive cars and both took place in a tunnel.

However, while Diana was travelling beside the River Seine in Paris, Ronaldo's crash took place in rather less glamorous surroundings as he scooted under the runway at Manchester Airport.

And Edwin van der Sar was travelling behind in a Bentley rather than a Fiat Uno.

Ronaldo may have grinningly left training at the wheel of his back-up motor, a £150,000 Bentley Continental, but it could have ended up much, much worse.

Early Doors was tickled by the solemn tone of the video on this Manchester Evening News article.

It also features a star turn from Ronaldo's busybody next-door neighbour, who claims "he would have written it off on Monday" had she not armed him with advice on how to drive in cold weather - namely: "don't hit the brakes".

ED might be a curmudgeon, but it wishes death on nobody, least of all Ronaldo who is such a rich source of entertainment. But it can't help but wonder what might have happened had he failed to escape unscathed.

It would have been comfortably the biggest news story of ED's lifetime, knocking 9/11 and the fall of the Berlin Wall into seismically important but celebrity-free obscurity.

It would have resulted in a spontaneous outpouring of grief to dwarf even the aftermath of Diana's death, with Manchester United fans, people with Ronaldo in their fantasy team and fake tan salesmen taking to the streets in mourning.

There is also a very real chance that Elton John would have turned up to sing at his funeral, but the Daily Express's decision to relegate Ronaldo's crash to page 25 suggests it may not have dedicated a decade's worth of front pages to the investigation.

Source: Early Doors