RONALDO RAISES THE BAR AGAIN

CRISTIANO RONALDO is reaching the end of his career. We all recognise this. He cannot lift Real Madrid as he used to in every game. Just some. Often the biggest ones. And he still has the capacity to amaze. Against Paris Saint-Germain, from the penalty spot, he made the ball levitate before striking it. Call it his David Copperfield moment. And as often happens with Ronaldo (right), at the point when observers were dismissing the event as a fluke or accident, one of his former teammates came along to say, no, he worked ceaselessly on making the ball move that way in training. There are some great footballers but not many who do stuff that has never been seen before. That’s Ronaldo. Nobody got the ball to move from a free-kick like he did and nobody has made it rise on the penalty spot without touching it, too. If Rio Ferdinand is correct and Ronaldo worked on ways to disturb the turf around the ball, causing it to slightly, but barely detectably, lift so a penalty became a volley, then genius is not too strong a word. We have all seen some wonderful players, but Ronaldo is unique.