(a touching moment from the training ground in which striker, left, and manager, right, discussing the meaning of the word “clandestine”)

While today’s draw for the Champions League round of 16 successfully paired Sir Alex Ferguson with old sparring partner Jose Mourinho, the former hasn’t reacted well to continued reports Manchester United have a secret agreement to sell Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid. From the Independent’s Sam Wallace :

“Do you think I would enter into a contract with that mob?” he said. “Absolutely no chance. I would not sell them a virus. That is a ‘No’ by the way. There is no agreement whatsoever between the clubs.”

After he previously evoked Real’s links to the fascist regime of General Franco, it now seems that Ferguson’s opinion of the club, whom United could be paired with in today’s Champions League draw, has fallen even further. He was responding to claims in a Spanish newspaper that the Real director Pedro Trapote had seen the details of a contract between the two clubs for Ronaldo’s transfer.

Ferguson said: “I said to David Gill [Manchester United’s chief executive] a year last summer when we sold Gabriel Heinze that he [Gill] could bet his life this stuff will all start up around Ronaldo in January. It will happen again this January.

“We just have to ignore it. If we keep worrying about what Real Madrid have to say, we are not concentrating on our own publicity and the programme of difficult games we have got coming up. I’ve got to ignore it. Sometimes it can be an angry situation and sometimes I get really annoyed with them. But we know their game. I think we should play ours and ignore it all.”