Cristiano Ronaldo hasn’t exactly been attracting positive headlines recently, but write him off at your peril.
If Ronaldo feeds off anything, then you can bet that it’s the doubting and finger-wagging of his haters, driving him on to prove them wrong at every twist and turn.
And on the back of cutting his contract with Manchester United short and crashing out of the World Cup with Portugal, Ronaldo will have to dig deeper than ever to conjure up the powers of recovery that he’s shown time and time again throughout his career.
In fact, there’s one example from not all that long ago that Ronaldo can easily call upon as motivation to go again at 37 years old and silence all of those who think that he’s finished.
What did Ronaldo do vs Atletico Madrid in 2019?
We are, of course, talking about his extraordinary hat-trick against Atletico Madrid back in 2019 that saw him single-handedly flip a Champions League knockout tie on its head.
With Juventus having suffered a 2-0 first leg defeat at the Wanda Metropolitano Stadium, the five-time Ballon d’Or winner needed to produce something special to keep his dreams of conquering Europe with a third club alive.
And, well, you know what happened next with Ronaldo producing an individual performance for the ages to score all three goals in a dramatic turnaround that saw Juve win 3-2 on aggregate.
Video: Ronaldo scores epic Champions League hat-trick
It truly was a special sight to behold and the craziest thing about it was that so many people knew it was coming; not because they’d seen the future, but because Ronaldo – perhaps more than anyone else – is so often inevitable in his uncanny ability to pull his teams out of sticky situations.
That, by the way, extends to Ronaldo himself, who was more than fired up to make that historic night at the Allianz Stadium become a reality.
What did Ronaldo text Evra?
And we know that because Ronaldo’s former United teammate Patrice Evra actually showed the great man’s pre-match WhatsApp messages to the world once the comeback had been complete.
Writing on Instagram back in March 2019, Evra explained: “Behind the scenes… these are messages between me and @cristiano 5 days before the massive comeback!!!
“This just shows you the confidence, the anger, the determination from the best player in the world 🌎 we should thank cricri mummy and daddy and of course god 🙏🏼for giving to us that nice man and unbelievable player.
“Every big occasion with big pressure my brother always proves he is the man !!! Soo please don’t be jealous I just wanna share and if you don’t agree I can’t do anything for you …enjoy your life but you have to recognise he is simply the best of the best and don’t try to tap the screen for his number 😂😂😂.”
To say that the messages themselves underline Ronaldo’s self-belief would be the mother of all understatements because he essentially called exactly what happened ahead of time.
Look, at times there can be no denying that Ronaldo backing himself can border on arrogance, but that’s arguably what you need to rise to the top and succeed just like ‘CR7’ has done.
At the end of the day, he saw something that a lot of people didn’t in what was widely viewed as a done-and-dusted European tie, but his confidence in himself proved so infectious that after the comeback was wrapped up you just felt like saying: ‘well, of course that’s what happened.’
Only Ronaldo knows the extent to which those powers of recovery have faded in the last three years, but we should all have learnt by now that you’d be absolutely barmy to write him off.
Whatever Ronaldo goes on to do next, you can rest assured that we haven’t heard the last of him.
You can find all of the latest football news and rumours right here.
News Now - Sport News Article From & Read More ( Cristiano Ronaldo: What did ex-Juventus star text Evra before iconic 2019 hat-trick? - GIVEMESPORT )https://ift.tt/tgZsBQ9
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar