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An excerpt from Guillem Balague’s new book on Cristiano Ronaldo details an incident from 2013 behind the scenes at Real Madrid when there was a confrontation between Cristiano Ronaldo and Jose Mourinho after a match against Valencia.
Spanish football expert Guillem Balague is currently working on a book about Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo. It is supposed to be along the lines of a similar work he had about Lionel Messi. The Spaniard released a couple of excerpts from his book through The Telegraph.
One of these excerpts details a confrontation between Ronaldo and Mourinho after the manager pulled up the player for not tracking back at the end of the game. Balague’s book details the game from January 2013 when Real Madrid were beating Valencia 2-0 with 10 minutes left on the clock.
The account begins from the point Ronaldo took a throw-in hurriedly so Mesut Ozil could not control it and the boss reprimanded Ronaldo on the touchline for it. Once he had calmed down after the game ended and they were headed down into the dressing room, Mourinho once again brought up the issue with the forward.
At this point Ronaldo furiously got up to defend himself, saying, “After everything I’ve done for you, this is how you treat me! How dare you say that to me?!”
The Mourinho addressed the silent dressing room while trying to keep his calm, saying, “I was saying it for the team, because the team needed you to track back..”
The book then goes on to read: “As he could see Cristiano had no intention of calming down, he gradually retreated. Soon after, he approached the forward again to resume the conversation with less tension. But Ronaldo fired back angrily. Mourinho was unable to contain himself any longer.
‘Just so you know,’ he shouted for everybody to hear, ‘many think like me here, but don’t dare say it, they don’t have the b***s to tell you.’”
Balague then says many of the Real Madrid players had asked Mourinho either directly or through coaching staff to ask Ronaldo to defend more. The situation was so heated that apparently Ronaldo had to be held back by other players rumoured to be Casillas, Arbeloa, Khedira and Ramos so the two wouldn’t physically assault each other.
The Spaniard crucially adds: “Ronaldo took what should have been understood as a tactical comment as a personal attack. The relationship between Mourinho and Ronaldo would never be the same again.”
Mourinho left Real Madrid at the end of the 2013 season just months after the incident to join Chelsea. How much the incident influenced his decision to leave is unknown but clearly it made a significant dent with one of his most crucial players.
