Zinedine Zidane says his Real Madrid players are ready for their Champions League last-16 tie with Roma after watching his side beat Athletic Bilbao on Saturday.
Los Blancos beat the Basque outfit 4-2 to move a point behind Barcelona in the league, although the Catalan outfit have two games in hand. Ronaldo scored twice while Toni Kroos and James Rodriguez also netted in the win – Zidane’s fifth is six games since taking over as boss.
The only downside was a red card for Raphael Varane who received two bookings and was given his marching orders seven minutes from time.
At his press conference afterwards, Zidane said: “We are ready for the game on Wednesday in Rome. We are doing well in terms of fitness and play. I am happy with what we did against very good opponents. The important thing for us is to perform at our top level and win games. Over 90 minutes there are always difficult moments. I am more or less happy with all of our games.”
Asked for this thoughts on the red card, Zidane said he thought it appeared to be harsh – the second yellow was for an innocuous looking aerial challenge.
“I am not worried. He is a young player, we are gradually going to ask more of him. What I want to see with players that make mistakes is that they realise the next time what they have to do correctly. However, he looks to be doing well. I don’t think his sending off was fair, I didn’t see the images but they told me that it was a normal jump,” he commented.
With much debate going on in the media at the moment about whether Ronaldo has seen his best days, the boss was asked what he thought of his star man.
And he responded: “You are here to assess if he is doing well or not but today he once again showed that he is, I don’t know if I can say it, doing f……. well.”
we are winning no lose may be a draw