Ronaldo storm hits Portugal national team's account: his sister says 'as you judge, so shall you be judged!'

Al-Don's crisis reaches Instagram

The fallout from the crisis between Cristiano Ronaldo and Jorge Jesus has reached Portugal's social media accounts. The national team's official Instagram account shed thousands of followers in a matter of hours.

Ronaldo walked out of the Portugal camp in Denmark on Wednesday evening, after Jesus's comments sparked the row. The echoes of the dispute spread quickly to the digital world.

In less than 24 hours since the crisis broke, Portugal's Instagram account lost more than 400,000 followers.

As the storm erupted yesterday evening, the official account held around 24 million and 942,000 followers, according to the Portuguese newspaper "A Bola". By this afternoon the figure had dropped to around 24 million and 500,000.

Comments flooded social media, "A Bola" reported, among them: "We weren't following Portugal, we were following Cristiano Ronaldo", and "Now I no longer have to pretend I love Portugal thanks to Cristiano. He was the only good player in this team".

Ronaldo's sister reacts

These figures did not escape Elma Aveiro, Cristiano Ronaldo's sister. She made a point of sharing the data on the national team account's dwindling following through the Stories feature on her own Instagram.

Elma paired the posts with pointed messages, writing: "Revenge is a dish best served cold... here you do the deed and here you pay the price. The road ahead", or, in the common sense, "as you sow, so shall you reap".

Another post read: "Here we are, the world turns in many cycles".

Cristiano Ronaldo, meanwhile, still tops the list of the most followed personalities on Instagram, with a total of 679 million followers.

His own account has not been immune, though. Over the last 15 days it has lost more than 500,000 followers, coinciding with the recent developments around his future with the Portugal national team.