Real Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane says he remains optimistic that Cristiano Ronaldo will be available for Wednesday’s Spanish Super Cup second leg at home to Barcelona — despite his five-match ban for being sent off in Sunday’s first leg.
Ronaldo was shown a second yellow card late on in Madrid’s 3-1 win at the Camp Nou after referee Ricardo De Burgos Bengoetxea ruled he had dived to try and win a penalty.
Zidane told a news conference that he would wait until an appeal was heard on the morning of the game before deciding on his squad.
“The committee will meet tomorrow morning, and after that we will see what we will do ourselves,” the Blancos coach said. “I don’t know what will happen.
“This annoys us a lot. I do not get into it with referees. But when you watch it back, and think that in the end Cristiano will miss five games with us… I know referees have a hard job, and anybody can make a mistake. But in the end five games for what happened is a lot. It is normal for us to be annoyed.”
Asked if he saw evidence of a “campaign” against Ronaldo, Zidane declined to rule out the possibility.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I hope not. I don’t want to get into this, but in the end, this does not deserve five games. We are annoyed today, thinking that we will be without Cristiano for a long time. He is annoyed [too] as he wants to play, and when he can’t play he gets annoyed.”
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