Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo has plans to marry long-term partner Georgina Rodriguez.

However, the 37-year-old admits the wedding bells will not ring in the near future.

Ronaldo met the 28-year-old model in Spain while he was plying his trade with Real Madrid. The pair became an item before Ronaldo joined Juventus in a £99million transfer in the summer of 2018.

After three years in Italy, the besotted couple and their family moved to a Cheshire mansion as Ronaldo returned to Old Trafford 12 years after leaving United. The Portugal captain believes he and Rodriguez “deserve” to marry each other after many happy years together but insisted “that’s not coming now in my plans”.

“I’m not thinking now about that but I can see in the future I think I deserve, she deserves,” Ronaldo told Piers Morgan in a TalkTV interview. “But it’s something that’s not coming now in my plans but in the future is yes, I want.”

Ronaldo and Rodriguez’s daughter, Alana Martina, was born in November 2017. The football superstar already had three children at the time: Cristiano Junior, Mateo and Eva Maria. The couple announced they were expecting twins in late 2021 but, tragically, Angel, the baby boy, did not survive as sister Bella was born.

Tough conversations

Ronaldo opened up on the hugely-challenging conversations he had to have with his other children when they returned home from hospital. He said: “In the beginning. Gio [Rodriguez] are arriving home and the kids start to say, ‘where’s the other baby? Where’s the other baby?’

“Of course, Cristiano [Junior], I had a conversation with him in the day, because he’s 12 years old, he knows, understands everything, and I had a nice conversation with him. We cried together in his bedroom and explained and it’s kind of – he doesn’t understand, he does understand, but in same way he was a little bit confused.

“The other ones in the beginning, on the table, the kids start to say, ‘Mom where is the other baby bla bla bla’. And you in the beginning they start to say because, you know, she had a little bit of a belly because they had two, it’s a hard process. And after one week I say, ‘Let’s be up front and let’s be honest with the kids, let’s say that, Angel, which is the name, they go to the Heaven’.

Ronaldo said he keeps his son’s ashes with him in the house, as well as those of his father, who died of liver failure in 2005. The former Sporting Lisbon youngster was overwhelmed by the support he received from the public after Angel’s passing and confirmed he received a touching letter from the Royal Family.

“The way they treat me, me and my family in that difficult moment, I should say straight to the camera thank you, ‘Thank you, to the all English community that helped me in that moment’,” he added.