Cristiano Ronaldo suffered professional disappointment on Wednesday night when Portugal were knocked out the Confederations Cup – but his personal joy on Thursday surely more than made up for it.

Ronaldo met his newborn twins for the first time, and shared a sweet picture of him holding his son and daughter on social media.

It was captioned: ‘So happy to be able to hold the two new loves of my life’, as the Ballon D’Or winner looked on his children with love.

The birth of the as-yet-unnamed twins mean that Ronaldo is now a father-of-three, as they join their older brother, Cristiano junior.

Cristiano senior was only meeting the twins for the first time on Thursday as he had been away with Portugal at the Confederations Cup, where they were beaten in the semi-finals on penalties by Chile.

He confirmed their birth officially for the first time after that game via a Facebook post, following days of rumours.

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The free-scoring forward, who has a seven-year-old son – Cristiano Ronaldo Jnr – from a previous relationship, uploaded a photo to social media last month which showed him affectionately holding Rodríguez’s stomach.

On Wednesday night , Ronaldo revealed he had been allowed to return home from the tournament. Hours earlier Portugal had been eliminated from the cup following a penalty shoot-out defeat to Chile.

He will be allowed to miss Portugal’s third-place play-off against either Germany or Mexico in order to return home to his family.

According to the Portuguese TV channel SIC, Ronaldo had a boy and girl named Eva and Mateo via a mother on the west coast of America.

‘I was in the service of the National Team, as it always happens, body and soul, even though I knew my two sons were born,’ said Ronaldo, in a statement on Facebook.

‘Unfortunately, we have not been able to achieve the main sporting objective we wanted, but I am sure we will continue to give the Portuguese joy.