Zinedine Zidane has hailed Cristiano Ronaldo following his “magnificent” performance in Real Madrid’s 6-0 demolition of Espanyol.
Sunday night was the second time this season that Los Blancos had beaten Espanyol 6-0 in La Liga, as Ronaldo took his goal tally to 19 in Spain’s top flight.
The superstar No.7 scored a hat-trick as Madrid ran riot for a third time in Zidane’s four league matches, and the French tactician believes the Portugal international was magnificent during the game.
“We’re so used to seeing Cristiano scoring, if he doesn’t get a hat-trick, people think there’s something wrong,” Zidane told AS.
“We’ve got accustomed to him scoring always – in every game. That won’t change because he is a very effective player, he has tremendous ambition and he always wants to score for the team.
“It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t score. Defensively, he did a magnificent job.”
Ronaldo has now scored 19 goals in La Liga this term which is the joint-most in the division. Barcelona’s Luis Suarez was ahead of the pack after his winning goal against Atletico Madrid on Saturday but Ronaldo caught up at the Bernabeu.
After Sunday night’s victory, Madrid are now just four points behind their rivals Barcelona, but the reigning league champions do still have a game in hand over both Real and Atletico Madrid.
Zidane knows, though, that to win the Liga title he will need Ronaldo to be in the form of his life for the remainder of the campaign having improved somewhat since the Frenchman took over from Rafael Benitez.
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