Like Real Madrid, the talented and intelligent Paris Hilton has expended a considerable amount of energy pursuing Cristiano Ronaldo. Like Real Madrid, she made several none-too-subtle advances last season, to no avail (“you can take a dive in my box any time you like, big boy” etc, I would guess). Like Real Madrid, it seems she has finally got her man — for a while, anyway.

Ronaldo celebrated his transfer by entertaining Paris in the early hours in her Beverly Hills apartment, perhaps by giving repeated performances of his famous and exhilarating step-overs. Most Premier League footballers have probably spent a night inside a Hilton and emerged the next morning feeling slightly ashamed. But Cristiano, apparently, went back for more the next evening. In the world of galactico footballers that counts as impressive commitment and loyalty, one supposes.

There is something rather fitting about Ronaldo’s latest romantic liaison, rather as if Gordon Brown had taken up with Susan Boyle. The thing that connects them — Cristiano and Paris — is public disaffection: over here, at least. Neither are liked terribly much, largely because they are considered to think rather too highly of themselves, almost to a state of delusion.

It is not so long ago that Paris attempted to tell the world that, contrary to public perception, she was “almost” a virgin, despite certain anecdotal and indeed filmed evidence to the contrary. It is not so long ago, either, that Ronaldo informed people that he was the best three footballers in Europe — presumably father, son and holy ghost. We do not take to such over-confidence, arrogance and estimations of self-worth — even when, in the case of Ronaldo’s footballing ability, it is manifested in a fairly just cause. He is, it has to be said, a very good footballer when he wants to be and fairly spectacularly talented even when he does not. But there is a part of the British psyche that would still prefer David Batty, or Robbie Savage, no matter how Ronaldo might illuminate a game.

Which is why the supporters of Manchester United are not wearing black armbands right now. Looked at coldly and without rancour, you might concur that Ronaldo was the best player in the league last season and even more so the season before. You could even argue that his presence in the United side gave them the edge that won them the title, moments of petulance and those epic sulks notwithstanding; he scored goals and made them too — and without him they are lacking more than a Chelsea side without Drogba, or a Liverpool side without Torres. But one assumes Sir Alex Ferguson knows what he is doing.

Ronaldo is disliked, then, for the following reasons: he is a cheat who has brought to the British game a new and eclectic level of cheating, a cheat who thinks that cheating has its own beauty, a beauty on the level of an invisibly executed step-over against some labouring lump of a right-back, or an unimaginably low and powerful free kick bending into the corner of the net.

He seems to see no loss of dignity in diving to the floor and whining to the referee, his face preparing for tears. You might argue, I suppose, that this sort of cheating is truly selfless, because it secures for his team a brief if sometimes decisive advantage while confirming the view that he is a complete and utter twat. Except that it is not so selfless, because the cheating usually occurs when he considers himself to have been in some way transgressed by lesser mortals, outwitted by the same lump of a full-back, or in danger of drifting out of the game, as wingers are apt to do from time to time. The cheating often says nothing more profound than, “Look at me, I have to suffer this” — even when he has suffered nothing whatsoever.

And this epic delusion, which we witness every week on television, is reinforced by his old manager’s complaints that Ronaldo needs protection from referees — more than, say, Ryan Giggs or Wayne Rooney need protection. Were they kicked any less, Rooney and Giggs? I doubt it. But they sure as hell complained about it less.

Then there is the smirking, the petulance, the bottom-lipped girly pout, the put-upon demeanour, the wink of dark complicity, the face contorted into an expression of unendurable pain and injustice when, unaccountably, a throw-in has been awarded to the other side. All of these things — and indeed the sublime skill — have about them a decided continental-ness, an un-Britishness — a lack of reserve, a fragility of the spine, the suspicion that he might desert his troops or, worse, collaborate, plenty of brilliance but no bloody grit or dignity. Ronaldo is what the Premier League has become: beautiful at times, capriciously talented, but not really us, if we’re honest. A different game brought in from a very different place.

It is a shame, in a way, that he did not end up at Chelsea, a shame for the sense of symmetry. Ronaldo-Hilton-Stamford Bridge, a sort of axis of evil against which we could all converge, howling abuse, preternaturally averse. But instead he has gone to Real Madrid, a team who, even more than our own top three, are beholden to the notion that money buys success — even though in recent years it is a notion that has suffered one or two reverses. And the fee — £80m, another reason to dislike the man.

What could you do with £80m? You could buy 572 Alan Smiths from Newcastle. Perhaps Ronaldo is worth it, and there will be one of those moments of great schadenfreude to savour in next season’s Champions League final, as a free kick is bent through 45 degrees and past Edwin Van der Saar. Even then, though, most of us would not wish him back.