Madrid – Zinedine Zidane believes Cristiano Ronaldo will be fit to play for Real Madrid in the Champions League final.

Zidane also said on Tuesday that Mohamed Salah deserves great credit for Liverpool’s surprise run in Europe but insisted the match in Kiev will not be a contest of the Egyptian against Ronaldo.

Ronaldo was forced off at half-time of Sunday’s Clasico between Real and Barcelona, which ended 2-2 at the Camp Nou, and Zidane has confirmed the Portuguese sprained his ankle.

There were fears the injury could affect Ronaldo’s chances of facing Liverpool on May 26 but Zidane is confident his star player will recover, along with fellow absentees Isco and Dani Carvajal.

“I think they will all be fine for the final – Cristiano, Isco, Carvajal,” Zidane said.

“The one more injured is Cristiano because it has just happened but it is going well, he is walking normally and he will be fine.”

Ronaldo was hurt during a collision with Gerard Pique just as he bundled in Real’s equaliser against Barcelona.

He played on for 31 minutes until the interval but did not emerge for the second half.

“It is a sprain, but there is no particular damage on the fibula, it is a small sprain and his ankle is stable,” Zidane said.

“Ronaldo, in terms of his injury, is incredible, that’s what he has this guy, he is already on the ground, walking, and feeling positive 48 hours later.

“Even if we do not know when he will resume with the team, the fact that he is already there 48 hours after shows his commitment, his desire to always want to play.”

Real visit Sevilla in La Liga on Wednesday but with the title race settled and their place in the top four safe, the key now is to avoid any further injury scares.

Liverpool, still battling for Champions League qualification in the Premier League, will not have the luxury of resting star players like Salah, who is considered key to them beating Real.

“Salah had a great season and I think he deserves a lot of credit for Liverpool being in the final, that’s for sure,” Zidane said.

“But in the end, I don’t like to call this a match of Cristiano against Salah. It will be Madrid against Liverpool, as always, that is the most important thing.”

METAIRIE, La. — Here’s the bright side: If any team is equipped to handle a No. 1 running back getting hit with a four-game suspension, it’s the New Orleans Saints, who have two No. 1 running backs.

Of course, Mark Ingram’s suspension for violating the NFL policy on performance-enhancing substances is not an ideal scenario for the Saints, who loved their one-two punch of Ingram and Kamara last season. New Orleans mixed the two almost interchangeably in the run game, passing game and short-yardage game.

They became the first duo in NFL history to each surpass 1,500 yards from scrimmage in a season, with both of them scoring at least 12 touchdowns and making the Pro Bowl. They were a huge reason the Saints boasted the No. 2-ranked offense and led the league in rushing touchdowns and yards per rush.

But Kamara sure looks like a guy who can handle being both 1A and 1B while Ingram is sidelined for the first four weeks of the 2018 season. The NFL’s reigning Offensive Rookie of the Year showed he could do a little bit of everything last season, as he racked up 728 rushing yards, 826 receiving yards and 14 total touchdowns.

Even the Saints admitted that Kamara was a better between-the-tackles runner than they expected while he averaged a whopping 6.1 yards per carry. By the end of the season, Kamara began to take on slightly more of the workload than Ingram.

We discussed those evolving roles at last week’s ESPN Fantasy Football rankings summit, where we collectively ranked Kamara sixth among running backs and Ingram 14th.

Obviously, they’ll be heading in two different directions on that list now. The bigger question is whether the disparity will become permanent.

Ingram’s suspension comes at a critical time in his career. Not only is he trying to prove he can still run step for step with the NFL’s newest superstar running back, but he is also heading into the final year of his contract.

The NFL Network reported that Ingram has not been participating in the Saints’ offseason conditioning program so far. Earlier this offseason, he switched from longtime agent Joel Segal to new agents Paul Bobbitt and David Jones. It’s unclear whether that means Ingram is angling for a lucrative contract extension before the season kicks off. If so, this suspension won’t help his case.

I certainly don’t expect Ingram to wind up in the Saints’ ‘doghouse.’ The former Heisman Trophy winner and first-round draft pick has been widely respected by teammates and coaches throughout his seven-year career in New Orleans, especially for the way he handled his smaller role in a crowded timeshare when things weren’t going great early in his career.

But even a guy as beloved as Ingram might feel like a luxury item if Kamara proves that he can be a true leading man in Ingram’s absence. One way or another, this suspension is a huge letdown at this stage of Ingram’s career after he had worked long and hard to establish himself as one of the NFL’s best running backs following early struggles.

The NFL Players Association on Monday filed two claims on behalf of former San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid, a 26-year-old unsigned free agent who believes that teams are refusing to sign him because he has protested during pregame national anthem ceremonies.

The actions taken by the NFL players’ union Monday are separate from the collusion grievance Reid and his attorney Mark Geragos filed against the NFL last week.

Monday’s filings by the NFLPA included a noninjury grievance specific to Reid’s free-agent visits and a more general “system arbitrator case” alleging that any team that asks prospective signees whether they plan to protest during the anthem is engaged in bad-faith negotiation.

“Prior to the start of the current NFL off-season, our Union directed the agents of free agent players who had participated in peaceful on-field demonstrations to collect, memorialize and report any relevant information about potential violations of the Collective Bargaining Agreement by teams,” the NFLPA said in a statement announcing the claims Monday.

The union’s statement lists five bullet points as justification for the claims:

• “There is no League rule that prohibits players from demonstrating during the national anthem.”

• “The NFL has made it clear both publicly and to the NFLPA that they would respect the rights of players to demonstrate.”

• “The Collective Bargaining Agreement definitively states that the League (NFL) rules supersede any conflicting club rules.”

• “According to our information, a club appears to have based its decision not to sign a player based on the player’s statement that he would challenge the implementation of a club’s policy prohibiting demonstration, which is contrary to the League policy.”

• “At least one club owner has asked pre-employment interview questions about a player’s intent to demonstrate. We believe these questions are improper, given League policy.”

The statement does not mention a specific team or teams in connection with the final two points, but it has been reported that Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown asked Reid during his visit with the Bengals whether he planned to continue protesting during the pregame national anthem. Reid, who joined with former 49ers teammate Colin Kaepernick in 2016 when the latter began his protests of social injustice during the anthem and continued them last year, said earlier this offseason that he didn’t plan to continue the protests.