Cristiano Ronaldo has responded to the jibe taken at him by former teammate Isco who claimed that Real Madrid shouldn’t care about a player who no longer wanted to be at the Bernabeu.
How do you solve a problem like Cristiano Ronaldo? When an average of more than 40 goals a season walks out of your club it’s not going to be a surprise when it causes an issue, even when you’ve won the Champions League three times in a row.
That’s what’s happened to Real Madrid with Ronaldo moving to Juventus last summer. They were expected to solve said problem with a big money signing forward but only brought in Mariano Diaz.
The lack of Ronaldo’s goals helped lead to Los Blancos breaking an unwanted record when they went 481 minutes without scoring a goal, before Marcelo’s late consolation against Levante last weekend broke the drought.
Ahead of the Champions League this week Isco took aim at his former colleague saltily saying, “We can’t be talking about someone who isn’t here. I miss [Gareth] Bale and [Dani] Carvajal when they are not with us. There are plenty of solutions to score goals. We can’t be crying over someone who didn’t want to be here.”
Ahead of Ronaldo facing another former club, Manchester United, in the Champions League on Tuesday the 33 year old had his response:
Isco on CR7: “We can’t be crying for someone who didn’t want to be here.”
Cristiano Ronaldo’s response: “Alright, they shouldn’t cry. I’m not in a position to talk about the crises of other clubs.”
Real’s leading scorer of all time certainly has a point about Los Blancos being a team in ‘crisis’ with Zinedine Zidane’s successor Julen Lopetegui already under pressure.
The run of minutes without a goal coincided with a run of five games without a win, with four of those being losses, before a win over Viktoria Plzen on Tuesday ended the bad form.
Despite only becoming manager in the summer, after being sacked by Spain on the eve of the World Cup, Lopetegui’s position is already under threat with rumours he’s set to be fired.
Real’s next game is the Clasico on Sunday when they travel to the Camp Nou to face Barcelona for the first time this season, not perfect timing for their manager.