Former Manchester United star Gary Neville has claimed that Real Madrid phenomenon Cristiano Ronaldo was ‘butchered and battered’ en route to superstardom.

Ronaldo, who joined Manchester United as a promising starlet from Sporting Lisbon back in 2003, eventually emerged a world class player after three years of growth at Old Trafford, going on to become a global superstar and arguably one of the greatest players of all time.

Neville, now reinstated as a Sky Sports pundit following a dismal managerial spell in Valencia, admitted United’s stars made life difficult for the young Portuguese but insists this was key in making the player he is today.

‘Cristiano was butchered and battered for two or three years at Manchester United, and he has said it made him a man,’ Neville told talkSPORT.

‘He didn’t arrive at Manchester United as someone who was setting the tone for everybody else. It wasn’t a case of he came in and all of a sudden everyone else upped their game, that’s not how it was. He became that out of what was in that dressing room.’

Neville explained that Ronaldo matured during his years at United and also shaped a hard-working mentality that has characterised his superb fitness and conditioning over the course of his career.

‘He was setting the standards when he left and he became someone who would come in and do half an hour before training and an hour after training, but there had been 20 players per season for 15 years doing that every day.

‘If you look at his performances in the first two or three years, his maturity, his decision-making, his physicality, his petulance, they were all smoothed out over a period of three or four years at the club,’ he concluded.

Ronaldo, who recently won the European Championship with Portugal, is favourite to pick up the Ballon d’Or for the World’s Best player at the end of the year. The award will be his fourth.