Speaking to the Talksport radio station, Townsend revealed that he had made it his goal to not leave the stadium without getting Ronaldo’s shirt and approached the athlete for this reason.
"You saw after the final whistle, I ran straight to him, I don’t know what he was muttering. He was muttering in Portuguese", Andros Townsend said.
Townsend believes that Ronaldo didn’t see him copying his signature celebration, otherwise he said jokingly: "If he had seen the celebration, there was no way I was getting that shirt".
The athlete previously revealed that he decided to imitate Ronaldo’s move in order to express respect for the player.
"This guy is my idol. I grew up watching Cristiano Ronaldo and I spent hours on the training pitch trying to execute his techniques”, he said, before saying that his teammates told him to perform the move when Everton scored a winning move. "I got a bit carried away, almost buckled and fell on my back, I looked up at the clock and it was 65 minutes. I gave the greatest player half an hour to make me look silly and score the winner. Thankfully he didn’t", Townsend said.
Immense Pressure on Solskjaer
“I watched him walk off and I can't say I like it. He walked off the pitch muttering to himself, which throws the questions up in the air - what's he saying? Who is he annoyed with? It can only come back to the manager. Actions like that - and Cristiano is smart enough to know this - will bring real pressure on the manager, more pressure than Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is already under”, Neville said.
"Cristiano is not always going to score, he's maybe not going to play every single game. But I think if he walks off like that, it's going to put immense pressure on Solskjaer. There's no doubt the talk after the game was about the manager”, Neville said.
Manchester United are now fourth, lagging two points behind leaders of the table Chelsea.