China Daily

Cristiano crisis? What crisis?

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His teammates on Portugal’s national team would rather talk about anyone except superstar Cristiano Ronaldo.

On the day Ronaldo was summoned to appear before a Spanish judge on accusation­s of tax fraud, defender Pepe and coach Fernando Santos tried to pretend the story simply didn’t exist.

Pepe waxed lyrical about a coach he’d worked with briefly 14 years ago. Santos nattered about friendly phone calls with a player from his Porto days.

When the pair did have to discuss their megastar, they kept it general. Legal problems? Ronaldo barely gives them a thought, they suggested.

“Cristiano is one more player who is completely motivated to help Portugal as he has always done,” Pepe said.

“Tomorrow we have a very important game with Russia,” Santos said with a pained expression when asked about Ronaldo.

“All the players are concentrat­ed on the Russian game and Cristiano Ronaldo is extremely concentrat­ed with the Russian game which we will play tomorrow.”

When the man himself emerged for training at Moscow’s Spartak stadium, he ignored waiting journalist­s before giving his teammates a quick nod and starting a ball juggling drill.

Ronaldo has denied any wrongdoing. The accusation­s against him have been followed by intense speculatio­n that he wants to leave Real Madrid.

One man is happy to talk about Ronaldo — Russia forward Fyodor Smolov. Having a megastar in the team is a luxury, opined the 27-year-old Krasnodar striker.

“We don’t have a guy who could compete with (Lionel) Messi or Cristiano for the Ballon d’Or, but I don’t think we need a guy like that,” Smolov said.

“It’s hard to build a united team when you have someone like that on the team because everything revolves around him.”

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