Nothing summed up the soap opera of Zinedine Zidane replacing Cristiano Ronaldo with 20 minutes left on Saturday better than the faces of Isco and James Rodriguez warming up on the touchline.
The two were captured by the cameras of Cuatro – Rodriguez looked across to the technical area and spotted that Ronaldo’s number was about to be raised. When he tipped off his team-mate, Isco pulled a face that said: ‘He’s not gonna like that’.
And he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit.
Cuatro got the lip-readers to work on the mumbled curse words that came forth as he accepted Zidane’s outstretched hand but never looked at him; then blanked matchday delegate Javi Col as he told Ronaldo to stay calm; and then took his place on the bench.
‘Foda-se’ was the key phrase used, a sort of ‘f*** you’ in his native Portuguese. There was also a ‘m***** f*****’ in there somewhere too. He didn’t seem to know what face to pull when Real Madrid conceded late on to draw a game they should have won.
You can't help thinking his first thought was: 'That wouldn't have happened if I had still been on the pitch'.
It's impossible to underestimate the massive ego, the huge self-belief, the extraordinary desire to win at everything - even the competition: who's played the most minutes.
‘He played well as always,’ said Zidane after the game. ‘On Tuesday we have a game in Dortmund and that is why I took him off.'
Ronaldo played 90 minutes of every game last season and every substitution before in his Real Madrid career has always been because the player has been carrying a knock.
This is new ground for Zidane. The Catalan press were pushing the idea on Monday that it is also very shaky ground. Sport’s front page screamed of a permanent split, a messy divorce – Jose Mourinho dropping Wayne Rooney meets Angelina Jolie cutting up Brad Pitt’s suits and throwing them out of the window.
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