Ronaldo takes swipe at ‘jealous’ critics

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JASON BURT M I L A N • Tellingly, Cristiano Ronaldo was ready with the statistics: more than 50 goals scored in a season (for a sixth successive campaign); top scorer in the Champions League again (16 goals); more minutes on the pitch for his club than any other Real Madrid player — and now three Champions League winners’ medals to his name, more than anyone else from his country, Portugal.

He deserved, he said, the praise, the congratulation even and adulation. “Only the jealous don’t feel that,” Ronaldo added. “But I don’t care about that. I always keep the people who love me. So this Champions League is for them, the guys who support me all the time, my fans in Portugal and around the world.”

It was early Saturday morning and Ronaldo was dogtired as he conducted his final media interview before the Real squad, staff, the officials and families boarded their flight back to Madrid to begin the celebrations proper at the Plaza de Cibeles, the square in the Spanish capital with its famous fountain where the players and supporters head once a trophy is won to party until dawn and beyond. “The fans are waiting for us,” Ronaldo said. “It is a famous night.” It was a famous night. Real had won the European Cup for an 11th time and for a second time in three years they had achieved it by beating their city rivals, Atletico Madrid, and done so, a little fortuitously, when it looked like the trophy was slipping away from them. They had even inflicted a rare doubt in the mind of Atletico coach Diego Simeone, who said he would now reflect on whether he had taken the club as far as he could.

And it had to be Ronaldo who struck the winning penalty in the shootout, after a 1-1 draw, after extra time when players were so cramped up and sapped by the stifling humidity in Milan that each movement appeared drenched in pain, and after a final in which he had been a peripheral halffit figure who had missed chances.

“An unbelievable night,” said Ronaldo, who will not now feature against England in Thursday’s friendly. “To win my third Champions League, penalties again, is unbearable. I was the top scorer in this competition again, I am so proud. We worked hard during the season to win this amazing trophy.”