Cristiano Ronaldo and Irina Shayk looked amazing together, and they were definitely inseparable for five years, but it all came crashing down in 2015 when the soccer player and the model called it quits. While they were never married, there were plenty of rumors about the two stunners striking up an engagement.
Russian model Irina Shayk and Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo met in 2010 when they were both modeling for Armani and it didn’t take long before they started dating. A year later, on Valentine’s Day, in 2011 it was rumored the Ballon D’or winner had proposed to Shayk, although it was never confirmed.
The two were a couple between 2010 and 2015, attending numerous ceremonies arm-in-arm, being spotted out on holiday together, and even making the cover of Vogue Spain in a racy, yet powerful photoshoot. With Ronaldo becoming one of the world’s greatest soccer players and Shayk rising as a coveted model, the two were the definition of a power couple. However, rumors of Shayk’s friction with Ronaldo’s family, as well as wildly different busy lives in distant corners of the world eventually got the best of the relationship.
Why did Irina Shayk and Cristiano Ronaldo break up?
In January 2015, news emerged that Irina Shayk and Cristiano Ronaldo were no longer together. The reported reason was the model’s refusal to attend a surprise birthday party for the sportsman’s mother. The two had a notably strained relationship, with sources close to the family revealing that Ronaldo’s mother didn’t think Shayk was the right person to help raise her grandson, the player’s firstborn.
Throughout the five years that they were together, there were numerous rumors about Ronaldo cheating on the model, which were more or less confirmed in comments Shayk made following the breakup. In March 2015, just months after the split, Shayk told Spanish magazine Hola that she felt “ugly and insecure” in the relationship and that she thought she had found the ideal man “but it didn’t turn out that way.”
Further statements by the Russian beauty appeared to be digs at the footballer. “My ideal man is faithful, honest, and a gentleman who knows how to treat women. I don’t believe in men who make us feel unhappy, because they’re boys, not men,” she said.
Before settling down with Shayk, at least temporarily, Ronaldo had a reputation as a ladies’ man. Shayk was his longest relationship up to that point — that is until he met his current girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez. The soccer player and the Argentinian beauty influencer have been a couple since 2016 and have two children together.
Shayk also went on to date American actor Bradley Cooper from 2015 to 2019, and, in 2023, was linked to another sportsman, American football player Tom Brady, who had also shared a lengthy relationship with a famous supermodel, the Brazillian Gisele Bündchen.