Ronaldo faces 99 lashes for hugging a fan in Iran: he made an unacceptable mistake

The foot­baller may have bro­ken the law when he met with a local artist who paints his por­traits.

Por­tuguese for­ward of Sau­di Al-Nasr Cris­tiano Ronal­do is hap­py with life in Sau­di Ara­bia. But some­times his actions cause res­o­nance due to the cul­tur­al char­ac­ter­is­tics of the local res­i­dents. It seems that now every­thing is quite seri­ous: Ronal­do faces a pun­ish­ment of 99 lash­es in Iran.

What was wrong with Ronaldo?

Ronal­do arrived in Tehran for the Asian Cham­pi­ons League match with local Perse­po­lis. Before this, the foot­ball play­er held a meet­ing with fans, which was attend­ed by an artist named Fati­ma.

She is a per­son with dis­abil­i­ties and also a big fan of Ronal­do. The woman draws por­traits of him with her foot and has long want­ed to meet her idol.

Ronal­do treats fans well, and this time he was espe­cial­ly pleased with the fan. While com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Fati­ma, he hugged her, there­by vio­lat­ing the strict laws of the coun­try. After all, in Iran, women can­not be touched — they even trav­el on sep­a­rate trains from men.

It is report­ed that accord­ing to the law, Ronal­do could be pun­ished in the form of 99 lash­es, if he returns to Iran. After all, his actions can be inter­pret­ed as adul­tery com­mit­ted by an unmar­ried per­son.

How­ev­er, there is no infor­ma­tion yet about the start of the tri­al, so all this is just spec­u­la­tion. Let us remind you that Ronal­do moved to the Sau­di club Al-Nasr in Decem­ber 2022. This sea­son, the Por­tuguese has scored 11 goals and six assists in 11 match­es played.

This is not the first act of Ronal­do for which he is called to be pun­ished. In August, imme­di­ate­ly after the win­ning goal, he ran up to the stands and crossed him­self. But he didn’t take into account that pub­lic demon­stra­tion of some­one else’s faith is pro­hib­it­ed in Sau­di Ara­bia: this can result in arrest, depor­ta­tion or finan­cial sanc­tions.