Atletico Madrid president fires back at Ronaldo after five-finger Champions League taunt
Cristiano Ronaldo let Atletico Madrid fans know how many times he’s won Europe.
So Atletico Madrid’s president let Ronaldo know what he thinks right back.
“Cristiano Ronaldo has not won five Champions Leagues at all, but only three,” Enrique Cerezo told Italy’s Radio CRC. “The remaining two against Atletico, he did not really win them.”
The comments come after Ronaldo flashed five fingers in response to jeering Atleti fans during his return to Madrid with new club Juventus on Wednesday, as transparent and authoritative a non-verbal taunt as you’ll see.
Cerezo’s argument is that while Ronaldo has raised the Champions League trophy five times, once with Manchester United in 2008 and four times in the past five years with Real Madrid, the Portuguese superstar wasn’t hugely influential in the two triumphs that came at the expense of Atleti itself.
He does have some semblance of a point. Neither the 2014 nor 2016 finals are particularly memorable for Ronaldo exclusively. Atleti’s traditionally strong defense and organization limited his effectiveness to a large extent. Both matches went to extra time, and over those 240 minutes of soccer, Ronaldo only scored once in open play, the fourth and final goal to cap an already-decided deluge of an extra session in 2014.
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That said, Ronaldo has led the Champions League in scoring every season he’s won the competition, and he converted the winning penalty in 2016’s shootout. If his shortcomings are going to be acknowledged, so must be his cool, clutch delivery in the biggest of spots.
That doesn’t matter to Cerezo, who has been club president since 2002, or the Atleti supporters. Nor should it. This is good old-fashioned bad blood, trash talk in its purest, funnest form. Ronaldo has scored the most goals in the history of the Madrid Derby, which Real leads with 110 wins across all competitions to Atleti’s 56, including five of their nine meetings in Europe.
If Atletico Madrid can eliminate its biggest boogeyman early, the final will be played at the club’s shimmering new Wanda Metropolitano Stadium, which would provide a mouthwatering chance for Atleti to raise the Champions League (formerly European Cup) trophy for the first time in its history.
But the boogeyman is very much alive. And Atleti is very much aware of it.
Joey Gulino is the editor of Yahoo Soccer and moonlights as a writer. Follow him on Twitter at @JGulinoYahoo.
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