Karanka: Ronaldo never needs to prove himself

Aitor Karanka, assistant manager at Real Madrid, spoke at a press conference on Saturday about Cristiano Ronaldo and said that he would "never" need to "prove himself" to the coaching staff, the club or his team-mates, and stressed the importance of Cristiano Ronaldo to the Madrid outfit.

In a week in which Cristiano has been at the centre of speculation about his apparent intention to walk away from Real Madrid when the season finishes, Karanka, who took Mourinho's place at the press conference after Real Madrid had beaten Athletic de Bilbao 5-1, talked about one of the most important players in the Madrid side.

"Cristiano never needs to prove himself, at least not to us. We know him well enough. We have talked lots of times about what Cristiano means to us and we know how important he is. He didn’t score today, but he provided assists, and was more generous than ever with the ball. He often sets out to engage in the game, and today he passed, opened up space and fought hard", he said.

With regard to the match against Marcelo Bielsa's Athletic de Bilbao, he said that at half-time, instructions were given to the Real Madrid players not to get into a game where the chances would go backwards and forwards between teams as that would make things dangerous.

"The best part was that greater intensity towards the end . But when the score got to 3-0, the match had reached a stage where if it went to 3-1, that could have become 3-2, which could have been dangerous. In the interval we talked about how end-to-end football was dangerous for both sides. In the second half we played well in defence and were in control", he said.

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Source: Marca