GSG Expert

🚨🚨Zinedine Zidane blasts Jorge Jesus over the tension with Cristiano Ronaldo: “I don’t like talking about other coaches’ dressing rooms. Usually I prefer to stay quiet. But some things you feel immediately when you have lived with a player like Cristiano. You cannot call a man of that stature into the squad, take him to the match, warm him up, and then treat him as if he is just another name on the list. That is not managing a team. That is forgetting who is in front of you. Cristiano is 41. Everyone knows that. I knew it when I coached him. His body is not the same. His minutes have to be chosen with intelligence. Nobody serious is asking him to run like he did at 26. That is not the discussion. The discussion is respect. If you select him, it is because you understand what he still represents. Not only the goals. The presence. The demand. The history he carries for Portugal. You do not use that history when it is useful and put it in a drawer when you want to show that the coach decides everything. A coach always decides. That is normal. I decided many times at Madrid who started and who sat. Cristiano accepted it when the relationship was clear. What a player of that level does not accept is being made to look small in public. If you need him for twenty minutes, prepare those twenty minutes. If the game changes and you do not need him, explain it like a man, before, not after he has been running on the touchline. Do not leave a champion standing there so that people understand who is in charge. Everyone already understands who is in charge. I worked with him. I know what he gives a dressing room even when he does not play 90 minutes. I also know what it costs a coach later if a player of that magnitude feels he was used, then discarded, just to make a point. The Nations League will pass. The next match will come. Jorge will prepare another team. Cristiano will remember how he was treated. You do not have to start him every time. You do not have to protect his ego at the expense of the team. But after everything he has given that shirt, you owe him something simple: dignity. A great player can accept being on the bench. He cannot accept being treated as if his name no longer means anything.”