Joe Aribo has been compared to Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema by his former grassroots mentor Harry Hudson.

Aribo has been one of Rangers’ top performers this season, having helped the Light Blues to the Europa League round of 16 and a Scottish Premiership title challenge.

Hudson, the founder of the Kinetic Foundation in which Aribo started his career, heaped praise on the 25-year-old for how he handles himself off the football pitch.

“In terms of role models, it’s good to have people like Joe who don’t always post about cars, holidays and all the material things,” Hudson said to Football Scotland.

“He’s very religious, talks about God and being grounded. That’s really important because most of their role models have been people like Ronaldo, Benzema and unfortunately people like Greenwood. They’re not always the best people to look up to.

“I can’t have any claim on helping him. He was always a very quiet and very nice young man and that’s credit to his upbringing.

“Hopefully, along the way, we might have helped but Joe was always a lovely young man. I don’t know what I would do if I was all of a sudden getting £5k a week at 18. It’s difficult.”

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