EUROSCENE: Sometimes, the dirty linen does get washed in public and on purpose, too. We may perhaps never exactly know just what prompted Brazilian striker Ronaldo to move from Inter Milan to Real Madrid but we sure as hell now know that he did not get on well with Inter's Argentinian coach Hector Cuper.

Perhaps it was a photograph published by a number of leading Spanish dailies last week that finally sparked Ronaldo's anger.

The photograph in question showed the striker with a hangman's noose around his neck in a photo-montage put together by a disgruntled Inter fan.

In the course of a long and polemical interview with sports daily Gazzetta Dello Sport last week, Ronaldo launched a series of hefty broadsides aimed at both Inter and coach Cuper.

"With me, but not just with me, there was no human contact. He (Cuper) kept his distance, he never laughed, never joked but it just seemed that we were to obey him.The only thing I asked (club owner) Moratti was to sack Cuper but he wouldn't do it. He preferred to stick with a coach who has never won anything anywhere."

The "never won anything, anywhere" Cuper, of course, is the same man who not only took little known Real Mallorca to a European Cup Winners' Cup final (against Lazio in 1999) but also took Valencia to successive Champions League finals (losing all three finals, admittedly).

There are Spanish commentators, too, who would suggest that some of the credit for Valencia's Spanish title success last season can be laid at the door of Cuper, in as much as he largely put together the side inherited by Rafael Benitez.

Ronaldo blames Cuper for Inter's last day Serie A title loss last season, for a series of minor muscular problems throughout the year such as when he was forced to run uphill carrying weight-cloths and furthermore claims that the Argentinian tried to persuade Brazilian coach Felipe Scolari not to take him to the World Cup finals.

Publicly, Scolari has rejected that last accusation, arguing that Inter and Cuper were more than co-operative with him.

Ronaldo, too, suspects that a series of suspiciously timed articles in the Italian media in recent weeks suggesting that his move to Madrid might be linked to a series of affairs with either/or/both a pornographic star and an unnamed Swiss banker's daughter were "planted" by the Milan club in order to further discredit him.

This latter accusation prompted Inter owner Massimo Moratti to respond that Ronaldo was being "just a bit ridiculous".

In an intriguing insight, too, Moratti admitted that Ronaldo had indeed complained to him about Cuper and had requested that the coach be sacked: "But given that he had previously complained about all the other coaches at Inter, I didn't pay that much attention," added Moratti last week.

The irony of Ronaldo's most recent outburst is that while he sits and watches in the Santiago Bernabeu grandstand, nursing the most recent of a notoriously long line of injuries, the Inter Milan side that he claims must dump Cuper "for its own good and for that of the fans" appears to be doing quite nicely thank you very much.

A battling performance in a 2-1 home win against Chievo on Sunday night saw Inter go top of Serie A and that at the end of a week when a 1-0 home win against Ajax Amsterdam put them top of their Champions League Group D .

This one looks sure to run and run.