Ronaldo: No friends, no problem

Posted Thursday, February 18, 2016 by foxsportsasia.com

The four-time Ballon d'or winner spoke about his time at Manchester United, saying that he was not close friends with some of the stars in the team, but that never affected the performance on the field of play.

"I will give you an anecdote: at Manchester I didn't speak with [Ryan] Giggs or [Paul] Scholes, but we still won the Champions League," he said ahead of Wednesday's first leg clash at the Stadio Olimpico.

Madrid's usual trident of Benzema, Bale and Cristiano, known as BBC, is often compared to the equally potent MSN trident of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar Jr deployed at arch rivals Barcelona.

Cristiano Ronaldo admits that he is not close with Karim Benzema or Gareth Bale off the pitch, but said that it does not stop them from operating effectively on it.

"If people say that their friendship is better than ours, then I can't stop them," the Portuguese winger said. "But I don't need Bale or Benzema to come to my house for dinner, the important thing is that we all get on well on the pitch."

Real Madrid, considered favourites for this year's title along with Bayern Munich and holders Barcelona, have qualified for the last five Champions League semi-finals, winning their historic 10th title - known as 'La Decima' - two years ago.

Yet their record against Italian teams in the competition leaves a lot to be desired, with Juventus dominating last year's semi-final and Roma stopping Los Blancos at the knockout phase in 2008.

If Real require any extra motivation this time around, it could come from the fact that they are now under the helm of Zinedine Zidane, who won the trophy as a player with Madrid in 2002 and as the assistant to Ancelotti two years ago when Real outclassed city rivals Atletico 4-1 in Lisbon.

"It's a special competition for the club, for me and above all for the players," said Zidane on the eve of making his full Champions League debut as a manager.

"We have a lot of history in this competition. The important thing is to be prepared, and we are. Physically, we're good, we're looking forward to the game then we'll see what happens."