The stills looked incriminating, but there was no intent behind Cristiano Ronaldo's stamp on a Legia Warsaw defender on Wednesday night.
Sometimes a narrative can form a little too neatly causing assumptions to be made with little or no proof. Such was the case for Ronaldo during his side's Champions League group stage tie against Legia Warsaw in the lion's den.
The Real Madrid talisman had a frustrating night. He played the full 90 minutes in the empty Polish Army Stadium seeing his side throw away an early 2-0 lead.
Gareth Bale's
stunner after less than a minute and Karim Benzema's effort on the 35 minute mark were cancelled out by goals from Vadis Odjidja-Ofoe and Miroslav Radovic. Thibault Moulin's goal with seven minutes left of normal time left a very nervy finish for the La Liga giants and it took a late equaliser from Mateo Kovacic to spare their blushes.
Madrid were expected to hockey Warsaw, a team who were rooted to the bottom of the group after picking up zilch from their first three games. Ronaldo was expected to run the game and get his name on the scoresheet, but instead, he couldn't find the net while his team scraped a draw.
With things not going his way, it would be conceivable that he may have lashed out and intentionally sunk his studs into an opposition player on purpose. Although the photos that emerged after the game seemed to suggest that this may have happened, the real story is quite different.
https://twitter.com/MessiWorId/status/793948094828253184
With Ronaldo being such a polarising character, it was inevitable that his detractors would jump to the conclusion that these pictures were irrefutable proof that he had committed a nasty, cowardly act on the field. But if a picture tells a thousand words, a video can tell more than a million. The slow motion replay shows us what really happened.
Ronaldo leaped into the air to try to head the ball, but was beaten to it by the defender, who lost his balance and fell backwards as he made his clearance. Ronaldo landed on his feet, but the momentum caused him to stumble backwards towards the grounded defender.
He managed to avoid hitting him with his left boot, but caught him with his right, but if you notice his line of sight, he immediately withdraws his right boot and begins to walk forward when he looks down and sees that he is standing on the defender.
https://twitter.com/90min_Football/status/794118867022909440?lang=en
That's not the reaction of a guilty man. Case closed.
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