Eden Hazard is ruled out of Tuesday’s Champions League clash with Atalanta following the Real Madrid attacker’s latest injury.
The 30-year-old “has been diagnosed with a muscle injury in the right psoas,” his club confirmed Monday after he was brought on in the 75th minute of Saturday’s 2-1 La Liga win over Elche.
His weekend cameo marked his first appearance since playing an hour of January’s home defeat to Levante. Hazard has suffered numerous setbacks following his 2019 transfer from Chelsea, including ankle injuries, problems with his hamstring and thigh, and a positive COVID-19 test.
Eden Hazard has missed 50 out of a possible 86 games at Real Madrid due to a total of 11 injuries ? pic.twitter.com/cGpQq1bSbC
— International Champions Cup (@IntChampionsCup) March 15, 2021
“He is a player who has never been injured or little in his career, and this is a new situation for him. We are with him, and we want him to be well,” Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane said during Monday’s press conference, according to The Athletic.
Hazard missed just eight matches through injury during his seven years at Chelsea, The Athletic reports.
“We are trying to find out what is happening with the injured players, there are things that happen in football,” Zidane said about Real Madrid’s spate of injuries in the 2020-21 season. “We have spoken about the preseason, about the number of games, and things up here in the head as well, which influences a lot.”
Real Madrid welcome Atalanta to the Estadio Alfredo Di Stefano on Tuesday with a 1-0 advantage from their first leg.
Zidane’s side could restore some Spanish pride after Barcelona and Sevilla were already eliminated from the Champions League. Atletico Madrid have to overturn a one-goal deficit in their second leg against Chelsea on Wednesday.
Real Madrid are off to the Champions League quarterfinals for the first time since winning the tournament in 2017-18.
Los Blancos punished a pair of errors to secure a 3-1 win over Atalanta (4-1 on aggregate) on Tuesday. Marco Sportiello’s absent-minded pass up the middle handed Karim Benzema the easiest of tap-ins in the 34th minute, and Rafael Toloi doubled the damage by conceding a penalty in the second half. Vinicius Junior, who made Swiss cheese out of Atalanta’s defense with his mazy dribbling ability, won the spot-kick, and Sergio Ramos converted with ease.
Luis Muriel’s free-kick in the 83rd minute provided nothing but false hope. Mere seconds later, Madrid broke into space, and substitute Marco Asensio dispatched the insurance marker past the helpless Sportiello.
Atalanta boss Gian Piero Gasperini made the bold decision to bench striker Duvan Zapata and start Sportiello instead of Pierluigi Gollini, who backstopped the club’s remarkable run in the Champions League last season.
Gasperini said he has no regrets.
Nothing worked for the Italian side. Remo Freuler’s red card spoiled the first leg, which Madrid won 1-0 thanks to Ferland Mendy’s late goal, and after a bright start at the Estadio Alfredo Di Stefano on Tuesday, Atalanta failed to take care of the details.
On the other hand, everything seemed to fall into place for Madrid. Ramos made his second appearance since recovering from a knee injury, and Benzema, who missed nearly a month with an adductor issue, played the full 90 minutes for a third consecutive match. The Frenchman has four goals since returning to play.
Toni Kroos and Luka Modric also performed well in the absence of Casemiro, who was suspended for the second leg.
Madrid will now enter Friday’s quarterfinal draw – and the business end of the season – with most of their star players available. Dani Carvajal and Eden Hazard remain out with muscle problems.
There’s a chance Cristiano Ronaldo could leave Juventus and return to Real Madrid in the near future, manager Zinedine Zidane admitted Monday.
“Yes, it could be,” Zidane, who coached Ronaldo at Madrid from 2016-2018, told Sky Sport Italia. “We know Cristiano, we know the person he is and everything he’s done at Madrid, but he’s a Juventus player now and we must respect Ronaldo and Juventus.”
Ronaldo’s future in Italy is far from certain after Juventus’ latest elimination from the Champions League. The Portuguese star failed to score in the knockout round for the first time in 16 years as the Bianconeri fell to 10-man Porto in the round of 16.
There are also concerns about Juventus’ financial situation. The club reported losses of €113.7 million for the first half of the fiscal year, and the board of directors conceded it could sell players to offset the residual effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
But sporting director Fabio Paratici sees Ronaldo as Juventus’ “future.”
“I have to smile. Never in my career would I have thought that I would have to discuss the value of Cristiano Ronaldo, whether it’s a good deal or a bad deal,” Paratici said.
“We are talking about a player who in 2020 scored 41 goals in 38 games with Juventus,” Paratici added. “He is the top scorer in Serie A, he has won five Ballon d’Or, and I have lost count of the Champions League. With us, he has already won many titles, and it’s a privilege to have him on our team.
“We hold on to him and enjoy him as much as possible. We are happy to have him with us. Does he represent the future of Juve? Without a doubt.”
Ronaldo joined the Old Lady from Madrid in 2018 for a reported €100 million. He signed a contract until June 2022 worth a reported €30 million per season.
Cristiano Ronaldo is laying claim to the world scoring record after notching the 768th, 769th, and 770th goals of his career during Juventus’ 3-1 win over Cagliari on Sunday. But some clubs and retired players may question his achievement.
The 36-year-old said he recognized Pele’s goal tally in competitive games as 767, and that he was level with the Brazilian icon until his three-goal outburst over the weekend. Pele has corroborated Ronaldo’s version of events.
“… I’m filled with joy and pride as I acknowledge the goal that puts me on top of the world’s goalscoring list, overcoming Pele’s record, something that I could never have dreamed of while growing up as a child from Madeira,” Ronaldo wrote on Facebook.
“Believe me, this story is still far from being over,” he added. “The future is tomorrow and there’s still a lot to win for Juventus and Portugal!”
Ronaldo represented Sporting CP, Manchester United, and Real Madrid before joining Juventus in 2018. He’s scored 102 of his 770 goals for Portugal.
Goal records have been the subject of heated debates across world football in recent months. In December, Barcelona congratulated Lionel Messi on becoming the player with the most goals for a single club after he netted his 644th for the Blaugrana. But Santos, Pele’s former side, soon tried to hush the celebrations.
Mirrorpix / Mirrorpix / Getty
Santos claimed Pele had scored 1,091 goals for them – 448 more than Messi at the time – after they supplemented his total with statistics from non-competitive fixtures.
“In the expert press accounts, O Rei scored 643 in competitive matches and the 448 goals scored in friendly matches and tournaments were ostracized as if they hold less value,” Santos said, adding, “A goal against Transvaal (from Suriname) has the same value as a goal scored at Real Madrid, in the middle of the Santiago Bernabeu.”
Pele likes to include goals during friendlies in his own count, too. The three-time World Cup winner proudly declares himself the “Leading Goal Scorer of All Time” on his Instagram page with 1,283 goals. In addition to his production at Santos, Pele racked up goals for his homeland, the New York Cosmos in the North American Soccer League, and while playing on teams cobbled together for exhibition fixtures.
Despite his assertion putting him at 513 goals more than Ronaldo, Pele has acknowledged on social media that the Juventus superstar’s record is relevant for competitive games.
“Congratulations on breaking my record of goals in official matches. My only regret is not being able to give you a hug today,” Pele wrote on Instagram.
Pele’s compatriot Romario, who starred for Brazil between 1987 and 2005, also claims to have reached quadruple figures in his career. But FIFA has described that as a “personal count,” noting in 2007 that the legendary No. 11 “openly includes 77 goals he scored at the youth level and a further 21 in friendly and testimonial matches.”
Numerous sources believe Romario’s actual haul is around 750 goals.
Tony Marshall – EMPICS / PA Images / Getty
But in reality, the globe’s all-time top scorer might not come from Portugal or Brazil. He could be a Vienna-born marksman who started his 24-year career in 1931.
Josef Bican played his club football for a range of Eastern European clubs, including Rapid Vienna and Slavia Prague, averaging 1.52 goals per game, according to FIFA. The governing body understands that rate, along with his exploits for Austria and Czechoslovakia, put him at an “estimated” 805 goals when he retired, while the Czech national football team says he scored 821 goals in official matches.
Bican’s total includes 27 goals scored for Rapid Vienna’s reserve and amateur teams, “in addition to some that were scored not in official international matches,” Agence France-Presse reports. Discounting those efforts would knock Bican down to 794 goals at most – 24 more than Ronaldo. And some researchers claim there’s data missing from the player’s 1952 season in the Czech second division.
At the moment, it would seem Ronaldo has clinched the true world scoring record, unless researchers scouring newspaper archives throughout Eastern Europe can uncover indisputable numbers for Bican.
