As one of the world’s top two soccer players, Cristiano Ronaldo has one of the most famous faces on the planet. He appears on underwear ads, video games, and shaving commercials across the globe, from the US, to China. In Portugal, he’s a demigod, but he’s even a draw as far away as Japan, where his ultra-recognizable face is used to sell dubious mouth-toning devices.

It’s a face that’s memorable to everyone, it seems, except the person who was recently tasked with recreating it in bronze. Ronaldo’s global success had inspired the renaming of an airport in his native Madeira islands — an event celebrated with a bust of Ronaldo’s head, commissioned to take pride of place at the airport itself.

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